Sell Europe to Greenland?

Europe is working on ways to boost the firepower of its bailout fund, a top European official said as the United States, China and other countries turned up pressure on the euro zone to contain its debt crisis.



Signs are growing that Europe is readying new measures to prevent fallout from Greece's near-bankruptcy from spreading to other euro zone countries, threatening the region's banks and hurting the world economy.


The European official said on Saturday the euro zone countries cannot boost the size of the 440 billion-euro fund, known as the EFSF, because Germany would not agree to such an increase.


"We need to find a mechanism where we can turn one euro in the EFSF into five, but there is no decision on how we could do that yet" the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Saudi Prince raped Spanish Woman

A Spanish judge has reopened an abandoned sexual assault case against a Saudi prince who is one of the world’s richest men, reviving accusations that he raped a 20-year-old model on a luxury yacht in the Spanish Mediterranean in August 2008.



The prince, Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, a nephew of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, is the largest individual stakeholder in Citigroup and, among his other major holdings, is the second largest investor in the News Corporation. Forbes valued his fortune this year at $19.4 billion, making him the 26th richest man in the world and the single richest in the Arab world.

For every mosque opened in the West; we should open a church, synagogue, & temple in Islamic nations = how's that for balance?

We the people of Earth will never win an argument with each other about whose imaginary friend is better.


Spain's National Intelligence Centre (CNI), which published a report in July, warning of tens of millions of dollars coming to Spain from Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to support Muslims, and calling for close monitoring of these funds. The CNI's report hinted that the money would be used to promote Islamic courts, remove girls from schools, and encourage forced marriages. The Spanish government's response was to call for all donations from the Gulf Arab states to be channeled through a government- controlled "Islamic Commission of Spain". The CNI pointed to the Kuwaiti government's funding of the construction of mosques in Catalonia, from which Islamic preachers are "spreading a religious interpretation that opposes the integration of Muslims into Spanish society and promotes separation and hate towards non-Muslim groups. Qatari donations are made through the Islamic League for Dialogue and Coexistence in Spain, a group the CNI says is "linked to the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria".

The Moroccan government is aggressively implementing "a strategy of great magnitude" to exert control over the religious and cultural beliefs and practices of the nearly one million Moroccan immigrants who reside in Spain.

The strategy involves establishing a parallel Muslim society in Spain by discouraging Moroccans from integrating into their host country, and by encouraging them instead to live an Islamic lifestyle isolated from Spanish society.

Rabat is also financing the construction of hundreds of mosques in Spain whose imams are directly appointed by the Moroccan government. Moreover, the North African country is attempting to impose Muslim religious instruction in Spanish public schools, and is pressuring Moroccan families to remove their children from those schools that fail to comply

According to Noureddine Ziani, a Barcelona-based Moroccan imam: “It is absolutely necessary to accept Islamic values as European values and that from now on, Europeans should replace the term "Judeo-Christian" with term "Islamo-Christian" when describing Western Civilization.

Dithering?

Euro-region central bank governors will hold emergency talks today intended to stop Spain and Italy from becoming the next victims of the sovereign-debt crisis and limit fallout from the first U.S. credit-rating cut in history.


The central bank chiefs will convene by conference call at 6 p.m. Paris time, said a euro-area central bank official who declined to be identified because the talks are confidential. A spokesman for the European Central Bank declined to comment. Finance ministry officials of the Group of Seven countries were due to hold a conference call starting at 6 p.m. in New York yesterday to discuss the crisis.

The flurry of talks comes as the U.S. downgrade by Standard & Poor’s threatens to further derail efforts to stop the debt crisis from engulfing the euro-area’s third and fourth-largest economies.

“Europe is in an incredibly dangerous situation,” Nick Kounis, head of macroeconomic research at ABN Amro in Amsterdam, said in an interview by telephone yesterday. “The risk is that the U.S. downgrade is just going to unsettle everyone even more. It’s a unique situation in that we are essentially in the heart of a European sovereign debt crisis, which has reached its meltdown phase.”

Sounds like the USA needs a nip & tuck!!! (see TV series for context)

“We’ve gotten inconsistency, hesitancy and unevenness” in U.S. economic growth, Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart said on 6/7/2011 in a speech in Charlotte, North Carolina. “I’m troubled by what you might describe as a lack of conviction in this economy.”
“Oh Mr. Chairman and Fed. Prez.: It’s called America’s deficit which has surpassed $14 trillion!!!”

What’s holding back the stock market and the economy is lack of sustainable confidence rather than a lack of money. Summer will likely set the stage for fits of starts, stops, falls and start agains markets for the remainder of 2011. Which is likely for the remainder of our children’s lives at the rate our enlightened leadership is managing the purse strings.

And really it stems from the politics of it all v the business fundamentals. If Bernanke said; the economy needs no further stimulus and we’re getting on with debt reduction. And Obama said, we’re out of Afghanistan and Iraq and focusing on our peace time economy. Imagine taking 25% of the military budget ($663.8 bln) and investing it in America v in American defense. What a concept. I mean if it still has to get spent in a military way, how about a war on urban and infrastructure decay? Get the Army Corps of Engineers to build some high speed rails; or lay some dark fiber; or raise a few utility scale solar pv arrays…or how about the Navy & Coast Guard cleaning up the waterways, or sending some officers in to teach English, math, history or physical education to our kids. There are plenty of ways to spend money wisely.

Those calling for a technical default -- which assumes that in short order the Treasury starts paying its coupon again – must recognize that this action would have long-term adverse consequences on rates.

Let’s remember Peru in 2000, which defaulted despite not having any problems making payments. That trick cost 200 bps in borrowing costs.

There are other impacts as well. A technical default could have a similar impact on foreign willingness to hold Treasuries – see Fannie and Freddie effect on GSE holdings by foreigners (they collapsed).

And of course this would hit growth. JPMorgan estimates that we'd see a minimum 1% GDP hit thanks to higher rates and a presumed selloff in equities.

Not to mention the dooms day scenario – a run on the banking system.

It’s not socialism I’m calling for, it’s survivalism. We’re on the wrong course. We need to be re-building our nation not dumbing, contaminating, and squandering it down. Unless the plan is the economic rapture, how about the end of pissingitawayism and let’s get on with the basics of business => cut debt, invest in people & technologically, and increase reliability. Now what would that America look like?

Meanwhile, the stock pick for the day:  WY

On a final note: Let’s avoid the protest chants on the streets of Spain: “no jobs, no houses, no pension, no fear.”

Just get it right!!!