Maybe it's the Euro crisis that seems to have turned the brains of the European Union's (probably male) image-makers soft. You can hardly spend all week trying to bail out Greece, hang onto Spain and keep Germany from getting surly (never a good idea) without making a mistake or two somewhere else.
The European Parliament has been advised to reject a controversial new global anti-piracy trade agreement.
Parliament's influential international trade committee on Thursday voted 19-12 against merely deferring its decision on adopting the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) until the European Court of Justice has decided whether it would violate the EC's fundamental freedoms.
The vote means parliament is more likely to adopt the committee's view against ACTA in its July 4 plenary meeting, regardless of whether the court rules it lawful or not.
Reblogged from National Post | News:
French President François Hollande's Socialists won an absolute parliamentary majority on Sunday, strengthening his hand as he presses Germany to support debt-laden euro zone states hit by austerity cuts and ailing banks.
The Socialist bloc secured between 296 and 321 seats in the parliamentary election runoff, according to reliable projections from a partial vote count, comfortably more than the 289 needed for a majority in the 577-seat National Assembly.
Reblogged from Financial Post | Business:
LONDON - Parties committed to Greece’s multi-billion-euro bailout are on course to secure a slim parliamentary majority on Sunday, according to an official vote projection from the interior ministry.
The projection showed New Democracy taking 29.5 percent of the vote, with SYRIZA in second place with 27.1 percent. The Socialist PASOK followed in third place with 12.3 percent.
The result translates into 128 seats for New Democracy and 33 seats for PASOK.
WASHINGTON - The International Monetary Fund is estimating that Spanish banks need at least a euro40 billion ($49.87 billion) capital injection following a stress test it performed on the country's financial sector.
The lending institution said Friday that Spain's financial sector is well managed but vulnerable. It recommended that banks raise capital by an additional unspecified amount beyond the euro40 billion to properly restructure troubled banks, noting that the country should be prepared for further bank losses.
Reblogged from National Post | News:
BRUSSELS — Belgian right-wingers have offered a bounty of €250 ($325) to anyone who reports a veiled woman to police, they said Tuesday after last week’s riots in Brussels over the arrest of a woman wearing a niqab.
Filip Dewinter, a senior figure in Vlaams Belang, a right-wing party, said the violence had made police apprehensive about enforcing the burka ban and the payment should put pressure on authorities to further enforce it.
And so the Grexit continues to be nigh: George Soros may handicap Greece's June 17 election in favor of the pro-bailout parties deemed more likely to keep the nation in Europe's monetary union, but better-safe-than-sorry still applies. If you're a Greek saver, that may mean stashing some euros under your mattress. If you're the British banknote printer De La Rue, it means…
Reblogged from National Post | News:
PARIS/BERLIN -- When Jean-Claude Trichet called last June for the creation of a European finance ministry with power over national budgets, the idea seemed fanciful, a distant dream that would take years or even decades to realise, if it ever came to be.
One year later, with the euro zone’s debt crisis threatening to tear the bloc apart, Germany is pushing its partners for precisely the kind of giant leap forward in fiscal integration that the now-departed European Central Bank president had in mind.
“Data compiled by Angus Maddison, an economist who died earlier this year, suggest that China and India were the biggest economies in the world for almost all of the past 2000 years. Why they fell so far behind may be more of a mystery than why they are currently flourishing.”
Got this resonable Quote from The Enterprise Blog:
“Big deal—on a per-capita GDP basis it’s barely ahead of El Salvador. As Joe Wiesenthal puts it, “let us know when China passes Albania.”
You find The Economist Article here: Hello America.
“The proportion of people who regularly attend religious services has declined steadily throughout Europe in recent years. But habits vary widely across countries. According to the latest European Social Survey conducted in 2008 and 2009, over 60% of Czechs say they never attend religious services, with the exception of “special occasions” such as marriages and christenings. France, Britain and Belgium are also secular nations, with over half of respondents never going to services. The most regular attenders among the 28 countries polled are in Cyprus and Greece, where only 2.4% and 4.9% respectively say they do not go to church.” Via The Economist Daily Graph.
«There is an unfortunate tendency to associate the term “neoliberal” with right-wing political views. In fact, the quite liberal social democracies of northern Europe have been among the most aggressive neoliberal reformers. Indeed, according to the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, Denmark is the freest economy in the world in the average of the eight categories unrelated to size of government. The Nordic countries have begun to privatize many activities that government still performs in the United States. These include passenger rail, airports, air-traffic control, highways, postal services, fire departments, water systems, and public schools, among many others. These countries do have much larger and more comprehensive income-transfer programs than the United States has, but are not otherwise particularly socialist.»
British politician, Daniel Hannan, suggests that UK would be better off outside EU – with a deal similar to wealthy Norway and Switzerland:
This article from “The American – The Journal of the American Enterprise” Institute provides a simple idea on how to make flying cheaper and more available for the average voter. The policy that went in to effect in 1997 in EU resulted in a 120 % increase in intra-EU routes, a 320 percent increase in the number of routes with more than two competitors - and of course: lower fares.
“In the European Union, any EU-based airline from any member country can pick up and drop off passengers anywhere within the Union, regardless of whether the airline’s home base is in Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, Britain, or some other EU-member nation. The competition that freedom fosters helps control costs, and offers greater consumer choice in both airline and route.
But that’s not the case for North America. Presently, for example, Air France can fly a passenger from Paris and drop him off in New York City or Los Angeles (or any other U.S. destination to which the airline flies), or pick up in Chicago and fly to Marseilles; but Air France cannot pick up a New York passenger and fly him to Los Angeles, or vice-versa.”
Last ned siste utgaven av Aksjonærforeningens medlemsmagasin her: Aksjonæren
Les intervjuer med påtroppende ABG Sundal Collier-sjef – Knut Brundtland og Høyres stabssjef, Julie Voldberg. Nordeas Kathrine Gooding Boye gjør opp sine tanker om det makroøkonomiske bildet, Frederik Lunde i Carnegie gir deg sine bets i oljeservicesektoren, Investtech fortsetter sin serie om teknisk analyse og vi viser deg høydepunktene langs Garden Route i Sør-Afrika.
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