France is mired in a stagnating economy. The private sector is under pressure, auto manufacturing in a depression. Unemployment hit a 13-year high. Over 3 million people are out of work. Youth unemployment of 22.7% belies the catastrophic jobs situation in ghetto-like enclaves. Gasoline and diesel prices are near record highs. So there are a lot of very unhappy campers. And it could turn ugly.
Calamity Economy Strikes Again, But Hope Is Back In Vogue
by Wolf Richter • • 1 Comment
Hope was once again in vogue Thursday night in President Obama’s acceptance speech, after having gone the way of the green shoots. Hope has been swirling around the financial markets as well. The Fed keeps dangling QE3 out in front of them. And ECB President Mario Draghi injected a mega-dose of it with his bond-buying promise. It goosed the markets even more and powered them to multi-year highs. Then came the jobs report.
Bankrupt Cyprus And The Russian Connection
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Bankrupt Cyprus And The Russian Connection
The Republic of Cyprus, with its 840,000 people, has been in the Eurozone for less than five years. It and its banks burned through mountains of euros faster than anyone could count. Now they need a bailout whose magnitude balloons every time someone blinks. Yet, Cyprus has something other Eurozone debt-sinners don’t have: Russian money flowing back to Russia!
Merkel and Clinton Go To China: One Makes Deals, The Other Gets Snubbed
by Wolf Richter • • 1 Comment
Bring home the bacon, or the speck, as it were, was the guiding principle for German Chancellor Angela Merkel when she frolicked in China last week. But her pleas to get the Chinese to buy the crappy bonds of debt-sinner countries in the Eurozone fell on deaf ears. This week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was hobnobbing with the Chinese elite. It turned into a clash fest, and instead of bringing home the bacon, she argued with the Chinese over everything and the South China Sea.
The German Economy Tanks, The ECB Throws Gasoline On The Fire, And Eurozone Bailouts Enter Phantasy Land
by Wolf Richter • • 5 Comments
Slovenia joined the Eurozone in 2007, went on a borrowing binge that blind bond buyers eagerly made possible, dousing some of its two million people with riches, creating a real estate bubble that has since burst, and driving up its external debt by 110%. And in October, it may go bankrupt, admitted its Prime Minister. Because borrowing binges can last only so long if you can’t print your own money. And in Germany, the debate itself may tear up the Eurozone.
Russia’s Gazprom Tightens Stranglehold On Europe, France Falls: Natural Gas War Gets Dirty
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Russia’s Gazprom Tightens Stranglehold On Europe, France Falls: Natural Gas War Gets Dirty
Why would France suddenly prohibit shale gas exploration? Sure, there are environmental issues: flammable drinking water, earth quakes, cows that die, radioactive sludge in sewage treatment plants…. But French governments have had, let’s say, an uneasy relationship with environmentalists. Its spy service DGSE, for example, sank Greenpeace’s flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, in the port of Auckland, New Zealand, killing one person. No, there must have been another reason.
Monsters With Ominous Acronyms: From A Nation of Investors To A Nation of Fed Watchers
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Monsters With Ominous Acronyms: From A Nation of Investors To A Nation of Fed Watchers
People are holding their breath. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is to speak in Jackson Hole. There isn’t a soul in the markets that can shrug off even a single syllable. If his answer isn’t a clear yes, TV economists will parse his speech down to the last iota and look for commas that they haven’t seen before. Headlines stir the excitement. My blood pressure is up, my nails are bitten down to the quick, I haven’t slept in days. I’m ready. Oh dear Ben, I’m praying, let us have more QE.
The “Pauperization of Europe”
by Wolf Richter • • 7 Comments
It started on Monday. “Poverty is returning to Europe,” said Jan Zijderveld, head of Unilever’s European operations. The third largest consumer products company in the world was adjusting its commercial strategy to this new reality, he said, by redeploying to Europe what worked in poor countries of the developing world. Other stars of the industry affirmed it. “The logic of pauperization,” L’Oréal CEO Jean-Paul Agon called it.
Radioactive Contamination On San Francisco’s Treasure Island: A Tale Of US Government Obfuscation & Willful Ignorance
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Radioactive Contamination On San Francisco’s Treasure Island: A Tale Of US Government Obfuscation & Willful Ignorance
On Treasure Island, a former naval base in the San Francisco Bay, there’s a spot the Navy calls “USS Pandemonium Site I,” occupied by multi-family housing units. Potential contaminants: Radium-226 and cesium-137. Contamination, according to the Navy, is “unlikely.” But the Health Department finds 93 spots where radiation is up to 2.7 times the normal exposure level. In one area, it’s 4,380% above the annual dose limit.
Counter Revolt In Germany: Gagging “Hardliners” As the Economy Tanks And Future Exports Drop Into The Red Zone
by Wolf Richter • • 6 Comments
A hullabaloo has flared up in Germany over squashing democratic discussions on whether or not taxpayers should endlessly pay to keep Greece in the Eurozone and protect bondholders—the ECB and national central banks—from having to recognize reality on the worm-eaten Greek debt in their basements. The tools: political pressure, fake moral outrage, and ridicule. Now politicians have something big to hide behind.