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Photo Source Giuseppe Milo | CC BY 2.0

Yet the problem with Italy is not the problem that the European Commission or financial markets see.

Rome is planning an expansionary budget – just what Italy needs and just the opposite of what Brussels and the financial speculators in the bond markets are expecting or demanding.

Brussels wants “fiscal consolidation”. That is, for Rome to reduce its deficit – the annual gap between spending and taxation – so it can start paying down its huge public debt, which is 131% of GDP, proportionately the highest in the euro zone after Greece’s.

The government of the League and 5-Star Movement has raised the target for next year’s deficit to 2.4% of gross domestic product. That is comfortably below the EU’s 3% ceiling, but up sharply from a targeted 1.8% this year, flouting EU rules which call on highly-indebted countries like Italy, to narrow the deficit steadily towards a balanced budget.

Rome’s budget includes a reversal of an increase in the retirement age enacted in 2011 by a previous Democratic Party Government. This is a genuinely progressive and an economically sensible move, as it should force employers to high more young people sooner, helping to reduce the 31% youth jobless rate.

The budget also contains a so-called ‘citizen’s wage’, aimed primarily at the young unemployed who currently have to rely on their families for financial support. Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio has said the proposed payment of up to 780 euros a month will “abolish poverty”. That’s hyperbole, but any attempt to cut the numbers, which have tripled in the last 10 years, while those in “absolute poverty” have risen to 5.1 million (or 8.4 percent of the population), has to be welcomed.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

More Italians Move Savings To Switzerland As Fears Of Banking “Doom Loop” Intensify

October 18, 2018

More Italians Move Savings To Switzerland As Fears Of Banking “Doom Loop” Intensify

With the euro weakening against the Swiss franc (recently trading at session lows of 1.14) and Italian stocks and bonds tumbling once again on reports that the European Commission is planning to reject the Italian draft budget plan submitted earlier this week – a repudiation of Italy’s populist leaders that was widely anticipated – the Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard offered a glimpse into how middle-class Italians are reacting to the deteriorating relationship between Italy and the EU, and its attendant impact on the country’s banks and capital markets. In a trend that’s eerily reminiscent of the banking run that precipitated the near-collapse of the Greek banking system (most recently in 2015), Italians are scrambling to convert their euros into Swiss francs and stash them across the country’s northern border with Switzerland.

Right now, the movement has mostly been limited to the wealthy. “The big players” have already gotten out…

The Swiss group Albacore Wealth Management told Italy’s Il Sole had received a wave of inquiries from Italians with €5m to €10m in liquid capital. The super-rich are already a step ahead. “The big fish have been organizing the expatriation of their wealth for some time,” it said.

…and those with between 200,000 euros and 300,000 euros in assets are moving more quickly, inspired by memories of desperate Greeks struggling with capital controls that restricted ATM withdrawals.

“There is fear creeping in,” said Massimo Gionso, head of family wealth managers CFO Sim in Milan.

“People are concerned that if we get into the same situation as Greece, they might find the banks are closed and they can take out only €50 a day from cash machines. They don’t want to risk it,” he told the Daily Telegraph.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Italian Bonds Slide After Official Warns Credit Rating Downgrade Possible

October 17, 2018

Italian Bonds Slide After Official Warns Credit Rating Downgrade Possible

After starting off strong, Italian 10Y Yields have leaked wider all morning after a senior government official said on Wednesday that Italy’s 2019 budget may be rejected by the European Commission and a credit rating downgrade is also possible.

“Let’s say that the premise is there” for the commission to start an infraction process over the budget, Stefano Buffagni, cabinet undersecretary for regional affairs, said in an interview with Radio Capital cited by Reuters.

“Premier (Giuseppe) Conte is going to the EU to explain the motivations” behind the budget, he added.

With Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s due to review Italy’s credit rating this month, Buffagni said a downgrade “can’t be excluded and we must be ready” in case it happens. He added, however, that he did not think a downgrade would be justified because “Italy has very solid economic fundamentals”.

Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank economists said they think that Italy is squarely on a collision course with the European Commission, whose President Juncker said yesterday that there would be a “violent reaction” from other euro area countries if the Italian budget were to be approved.

The Commission has two weeks to decide on whether to ask for budget revisions. Nevertheless, Italian assets gained yesterday in the first trading session since the government finalized the budget plan amid the broad market euphoria. The FTSE-MIB gained +2.23%, pacing gains in Europe, and 10- year BTPs rallied -9.3bps, however much of this move is being reversed on Wednesday. Partially this reflected the broader risk-on sentiment yesterday, but it may also have been a reaction to a new poll showing Five Star + Northern League support at 58.6%, still a majority but at its lowest level in over six weeks.

Juncker Warns ‘The EU Cannot Survive Without Italy’

October 16, 2018

Juncker Warns ‘The EU Cannot Survive Without Italy’

Ignoring warnings from the European Commission, the ECB and the European Commission (as well as practically every other supranational organization in Europe), the populist-led Italian government managed to submit their draft budget to the Commission before a midnight deadline – an outcome that was cheered by BTP traders, who bought back into Italian bonds, once again compressing the spread to bunds, which has blown out in recent months.

But rather than representing a deescalation of tensions between Italy and Brussels, the game of fiscal chicken in which both sides are presently engaged is instead entering its most acute phase, as Brussels now has two weeks to review the budget proposal before it can either accept the plan, or send it back with requests for revisions. And anybody who has been paying even passing attention to the populist government’s denigration of EU budgetary guidelines over the past few months should already understand that Brussels won’t just sit back and accept the budget for what it is.

In fact, European Commissioner Jean-Claude Juncker hinted as much Tuesday morning when he told Italian reporters that accepting the budget would be tantamount to inviting an widespread revolt against the EU, per Italian newswire ANSA and the FT. Juncker also blasted Italy for abandoning the fiscal commitments it made when it joined the EU. However, though they have wavered from time to time, the Italians haven’t kept their intentions to press for a budget deficit equivalent to 2.4% of GDP a secret. Even Giovanni Tria, Italy’s economy minister, defended the draft budget, saying the deficit “would be considered normal in all Western democracies, not explosive.”

Undeterred by the fact that there’s absolutely no political will in the Italian government to back down from their budget stance, despite threats from the ECB to provoke a Greece-style banking crisis if the Italians don’t yield to EU rules.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

EU: Politicizing the Internet

October 1, 2018

EU: Politicizing the Internet

Even before such EU-wide legislation, similar ostensible “anti-terror legislation” in France, for example, is being used as a political tool against political opponents and to limit unwanted free speech.
In France, simply spreading information about ISIS atrocities is now considered “incitement to terrorism”. It is this kind of legislation, it seems, that the European Commission now wishes to impose on all of the European Union.
Social media giants — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Microsoft, Google+ and Instagram — act as voluntary censors on behalf of the European Union.
The European Commission states that it is specifically interested in funding projects that focus on the “development of technology and innovative web tools preventing and countering illegal hate speech online and supporting data collection”, and studies that analyze “the spread of racist and xenophobic hate speech in different Member States…”

The European Union seems fixated, at least for the internet, on killing free speech. And social media giants — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Microsoft, Google+ and Instagram — act as voluntary censors on behalf of the EU. (Image source: iStock)

In March, the European Commission — the unelected executive branch of the European Union — told social media companies to remove illegal online terrorist content within an hour — or risk facing EU-wide legislation on the topic. This ultimatum was part of a new set of recommendations that applies to all forms of supposedly “illegal content” online. This content ranges “from terrorist content, incitement to hatred and violence, child sexual abuse material, counterfeit products and copyright infringement.”

While the one-hour ultimatum was ostensibly only about terrorist content, the following is how the European Commission presented the new recommendations at the time:

“… The Commission has taken a number of actions to protect Europeans online – be it from terrorist content, illegal hate speech or fake news… we are continuously looking into ways we can improve our fight against illegal content online.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Italy Threatens To Stop EU Funding Unless Other States Accept Refugees

August 23, 2018

Italy Threatens To Stop EU Funding Unless Other States Accept Refugees

Europe’s refugee mess is back with a bang.

On Thursday, out of the blue, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio threatened to stop financial contributions to the European Union next year unless other states agreed to take in migrants being held on a coastguard ship in Sicily. The Italian’s ultimatum comes less two months after Europe triumphantly announced a “vaguely worded” deal on how to resolve the continent’s migrant influx.

“If tomorrow at the meeting of the European Commission nothing is decided on the redistribution of migrants and the Diciotti ship, I and the entire Five Star Movement are not willing to give 20 billion to the European Union,” Di Maio said in a video posted on his Facebook page.

He echoed statements by Interior Minister and Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini, who has refused to allow 177 migrants to leave the Italian coastguard ship Ubaldo Diciotti, which is docked in the Sicilian port of Catania. While Italian prosecutors opened an investigation into the detention of the migrants and 29 children were allowed to disembark, Salvini still won’t allow the rest of the people to come ashore and has attacked the EU for its “cowardly silence.”

Salvini described those aboard as “illegal immigrants,” and said they won’t be allowed to step foot on Italian soil. Instead, he insisted fellow European Union nations take in some of the asylum-seekers.

“Italy’s no longer Europe’s refugee camp,” he tweeted. “Upon my authorization, no one is disembarking from the Diciotti.”

Salvini, who is also interior minister, was defiant in the face of a criminal probe into possible kidnapping charges for forcing the migrants to remain on the vessel. The chief prosecutor from the Agrigento court, Luigi Patronaggio, on Wednesday boarded the Diciotti and said afterwards he had opened a probe against “unknown” persons for holding the migrants against their will.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Europe Warns Of An Upcoming “Trade Apocalypse”

June 25, 2018

Europe Warns Of An Upcoming “Trade Apocalypse”

As European officials struggle to do everything they can to save the WTO, which appears headed for an all-but-certain demise thanks to President Trump’s aggressive trade policies, EU leaders have apparently circulated an “internal memo” drafted by the European Commission that accuses the US of deliberately instigating the collapse of the global trade order, and warns of an upcoming “trade apocalypse.” In short, if this document is any guide, the trade war is about to get worse – as if Trump’s threat to impose 20% tariffs on all cars coming into the US last week wasn’t bad enough.

According to Bloomberg, the EU warned that the “rules-based system of international commerce” could revert to an trade environment where “the strong impose their will upon the weak,” the memo said.

Our world will go back “to a trading environment where rules are only enforced where convenient and where strength replaces rules as the basis for trade relations,” according to the memo.

The flirtations with a return to an environment of “mercantilist deals” have intensified as President Trump has been determined to narrow the trade deficit at any cost – even if the price is the collapse of the multilateral trade order.

Specifically, the memo, which was obtained by Bloomberg, spells out three complaints raised by the EU:

Gaps in the rulebook of global trade “leading to distortions, many of which associated with non-market policies and practices in major trading nations, that the WTO does not seem able to address adequately”
Aggressive unilateral actions by the US targeting allies and foes alike with punitive tariffs
The US’s decision to block appointments of members to the World Trade Organization’s Appellate Body that serves as the final arbiter in trade disputes.

The EU also complained about the US’s practice of blocking appointments to the appellate body that would help render a judgment in a WTO trade dispute.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Then They Came for the Globalists

March 23, 2018

Then They Came for the Globalists

Photo by Francisco Osorio | CC BY 2.0

Thank God for the corporate media. If it wasn’t for them, and the ADL, I’d have probably never discovered that I’m a Nazi. Apparently, I’ve been one for quite some time … which is weird, as I had no idea. Here I was, naively believing that I’d been writing about global capitalism and the realignment of political power and ideology in the post-Cold War world, when all along I had really just been persecuting the Jews. I didn’t think I was persecuting the Jews. But such is the insidious nature of thoughtcrime. When you’re a Nazi thought criminal (as I apparently am), it doesn’t matter what you think you’re thinking. What matters is what the global capitalist ruling classes tell you you’re thinking, which it turns out is often a lot more complicated and horrible than what you thought you were thinking.

For example, I’ve been thinking and writing about globalism, which most dictionaries define as “a national policy of treating the whole world as a proper sphere for political influence,” or “the development of socioeconomic networks that transcend national boundaries,” or something like that … which was more or less my understanding of the term. Little did I know that these fake “definitions” had been infiltrated into these dictionaries by discord-sowing Strasserist agents to dupe political satirists like myself into unknowingly spreading anti-Semitism as part of Putin’s Master Plan to destroy the United States of America and establish worldwide Nazi domination.

Fortunately, the lexicography experts in the corporate media and the Anti-Defamation League cleared that up for me earlier this month. According to these experts, words like “globalist” and “globalism” don’t really mean anything. They are simply Nazi code words for “the Jews.” There is actually no such thing as “globalism,” or “global capitalism,” or “transnational capitalism,” or “supranational quasi-governmental entities” like the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank … or, OK, sure, there are such entities, but there is no legitimate reason to discuss them, or write about them, or even casually mention them, and anyone who does is definitely a Nazi.

Now, imagine my horror when I took that in, especially given my repeated references to “the corporatocracy,” “global capitalism,” and “the global capitalist ruling classes” in the essays I’ve been publishing recently. I didn’t want to accept it at first, but the more “authoritative sources” I consulted, the more glaringly obvious my thoughtcrimes became.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

100+ Respected Academics Slam EU in Letter to Juncker Citing “Rule of Law”

November 4, 2017

100+ Respected Academics Slam EU in Letter to Juncker Citing “Rule of Law”

On Thursday, over 100 well-respected academics slammed the EU in a letter sent a letter to European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council president Donald Tusk. The academics cited the rule of law.

The open letter , signed by highly-respected academics and members of the European Parliament, cited Spain’s “undisputable abuse of power”.

We are deeply concerned that the EU’s governing bodies are condoning the systematic violation of the Rule of Law in Spain, in particular regarding the Spanish central authorities’ approach to the 1 October referendum on Catalan independence. We do not take political sides on the substance of the dispute on territorial sovereignty and we are cognizant of procedural deficiencies in the organization of the referendum. Our concern is with the Rule of Law as practised by an EU Member State.

The Spanish government has justified its actions on grounds of upholding or restoring the constitutional order.

The Tribunal has violated Constitutional provisions on freedom of peaceful assembly and of speech – the two principles which are embodied by referendums and parliamentary deliberations irrespective of their subject matter. Without interfering in Spanish constitutional disputes or in Spain’s penal code, we note that it is a travesty of justice to enforce one constitutional provision by violating fundamental rights. Thus, the Tribunal’s judgments and the Spanish government’s actions for which these judgments provided a legal basis violate both the spirit and letter of the Rule of Law.

In the days preceding the referendum, the Spanish authorities undertook a series of repressive actions against civil servants, MPS, mayors, media, companies and citizens. The shutdown of Internet and other telecom networks during and after the referendum campaign had severe consequences on exercising freedom of expression.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The EU Just Did the Big Banks a Massive Favor

October 26, 2017

The EU Just Did the Big Banks a Massive Favor

“Testimony to the iron grip the financial industry’s lobby still exerts on governments and legislators.”

The European Union’s executive arm, the European Commission, made a lot of bank executives very happy this Tuesday by abandoning its multi-year pledge to break-up too-big-to-fail lenders. Despite the huge risk they still pose to Europe’s rickety financial system, big European banks like Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, ING, and Santander can breathe a large sigh of relief this week in the knowledge that they will not have to split their retail units from their riskier investment banking arms.

Breaking up the banks would remove much of the risk from today’s government-backed banks, such as derivatives and other instruments that were heavily involved in the Financial Crisis. Without these hedge-fund and investment-banking activities, even large banks would be smaller, less interconnected, and could be allowed to fail without jeopardizing the entire global financial system.

According to the Commission, such a drastic measure is no longer necessary since the main rationale behind ring-fencing core banking services from investment banking divisions — i.e. to make Europe’s financial system less disaster prone — has “already been addressed by other regulatory measures in the banking sector.” That’s right: Europe’s banking system is already safe, stable and secure. Bloomberg:

The proposal, which hasn’t progressed since 2015, was made to boost financial stability and safeguard taxpayers from the risk of future bailouts. While the commission and the conservative lead lawmaker on the file said this goal had been achieved by other laws on supervision and resolution, the socialist lawmakers backing the “Bank Structural Reform” bill disagreed.

“The too-big-to-fail financial behemoths still pose a danger to financial stability, to the taxpayer and to clients,” German Social Democrat Jakob von Weizsaecker said in a statement. “The withdrawal of the BSR file marks an unfortunate turning point in the European agenda on regulating large banks.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Set to breach targets again? Debt and deficit outlooks for Southern European Eurozone countries in 2016 & 2017

November 30, 2016

Set to breach targets again? Debt and deficit outlooks for Southern European Eurozone countries in 2016 & 2017

After dragging Greece kicking and screaming through a never-ending vicious cycle of fiscal adjustment and output decline, the European Commission seems to be softening in its attitude towards other struggling Eurozone economies. France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, among others, have all repeatedly been given extensions to reduce their debt and deficit levels after recurrent breaches of EU targets have gone unpunished, and the trend looks set to continue as our forecasts show that those economies will underperform again this year and next. Does this mark a shift in mindset within the Commission as to whether the Growth and Stability Pact is fit for purpose? Or rather just tactical maneuvering—or indeed resigned acceptance—in tough political times, as the EU faces unprecedented challenges to its legitimacy and survival?

Under the EU’s Growth and Stability Pact, all Eurozone countries are required to bring their deficits below 3% of GDP and to work towards reducing debt down to 60% of GDP, and any country failing to do so is subject to strict deficit reduction targets under the corrective arm of the Excessive Deficit Procedure. Certainly, widespread acknowledgement of the self-defeating Catch-22 whereby austerity lowers growth and thereby weighs further on public finances has encouraged the EU authorities to allow leniency in a number of instances, but this is only part of the explanation. The political and social crises that years of fiscal adjustment have unleashed across Europe have contributed to a wave of anti-EU populism and unprecedented electoral gains for far-right parties in some countries, and the emergence of anti-austerity far-left parties in others. The EU is therefore not in a position to rock the boat any further, as the potential political costs of taking an inflexible stance on debt and deficit reduction measures are now too high in many cases.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Desperately Trying to Salvage Canada-EU Trade Pact after Brexit, EU Escalates Assault on Democracy

July 3, 2016

Desperately Trying to Salvage Canada-EU Trade Pact after Brexit, EU Escalates Assault on Democracy

The European Commission, it seems, will never learn. Despite the existential crisis caused by Britain’s decision to leave the EU and the serious questions being raised about the EU’s gaping lack of democratic legitimacy, the European Commission just escalated its assault on European democracy. This week the Commission announced that it would ratify CETA, the controversial trade deal between Canada and the EU, as a unilateral EU agreement, not as a so-called mixed agreement.

What that means is that the national parliaments of the 27 remaining EU member states will have no influence whatsoever over the approval process, even though (or more likely because) the trade agreement will have huge, sweeping effects on the society, governance, and economy of all the nations concerned. In other words, the EU’s democratic deficit, one of the decisive factors in Britain’s decision to sever the cord from Brussels, just got a whole lot bigger. Yet it was barely reported in the press.

Here’s more from Euractiv, one of the few English-language media outlets that actually bothered to cover the story:

Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker reportedly told EU leaders on Tuesday (28 June) that the Commission considers the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) an “EU-only” agreement and would propose next week (5 July) a simple approval procedure…

“The agreement we have made with Canada is the best agreement the EU has ever made,” Juncker said, insisting that the Commission had come to the conclusion that CETA was not a mixed agreement, after a detailed analysis. “But if the member states decide legal opinions are not valid in politics then I am the last person that would stand in their way.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Monsanto and the Poisoning of Europe

May 18, 2016

Monsanto and the Poisoning of Europe

shutterstock_280697726

NeydtStock | Shutterstock.com

This week, a Standing Committee of plant scientists from 28 member states in Europe is likely to endorse the European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA) findings so that the European Commission (under pressure from Monsanto, Glyphosate Task Force and others) can re-authorise glyphosate for another nine years. This is despite the WHO classifying glyphosate as being “probably carcinogenic” to humans.

An open letter from campaigner Rosemary Mason to Dirk Detken, Chief Attorney to the EFSA, follows the brief background article you are about to read. In the letter, Mason highlights the regulatory delinquency concerning the oversight of glyphosate in the EU. The evidence provided by Mason might lead many to agree that processes surrounding glyphosate ‘regulation’ in Europe amount to little more than a “cesspool of corruption.”

There are around 500 million people in the EU. They want EU officials to uphold the public interest and to be independent from commercial influence. They do not want them to serve and profit from commercial interests at cost to the public’s health and safety. However, what they too often get are massive conflicts of interest: see here about the ‘revolving door’ problem within official EU bodies, here about ‘the European Food and Safety Authority’s independence problem’ and here about ‘chemical conflicts’ in the EC’s scientific committees for consumer issues.

And they get governing bodies that are beholden to massive corporate lobbying: see here about ‘the fire power of the financial lobby’ and here about ‘who lobbies most’ for TTIP, with agribusiness being the biggest lobby group behing this secretive and corrupt trade deal that is attempting drive a policy agenda above the heads of the European people and contrary to their wishes (see this on TTIP as well).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Another reason to get rid of the euro

May 18, 2016

Another reason to get rid of the euro

From today’s Open Europe news summary:

EUROPEAN COMMISSION CONSIDERING NEW TOOLS TO PREVENT CASH OUTFLOWS FROM FAILING BANKS

According to a document seen by the Financial Times, the European Commission is considering proposing a new ‘moratorium tool’ that would give national regulators the power to freeze payments to bondholders and potentially halt depositor withdrawals in order to prevent huge cash outflows from failing banks before national authorities can intervene.

Source: The Financial Times

This is the typical answer from the elite running the EU and the ECB. When their policies lead to failure, the people’s assets will be seized. In typical Orwellian New Speak fashion, such action will be hailed as the necessary and proper solution to the problem.

The circular economy

March 28, 2016

The circular economy

Umicore. Workers at Umicore in Brussels separate out precious metals from electronic waste.

When my battered 1969 Toyota car approached the age of 30, I decided that her body deserved to be remanufactured. After 2 months and 100 hours of work, she returned home in her original beauty. “I am so glad you finally bought a new car,” my neighbour remarked. Quality is still associated with newness not with caring; long-term use as undesirable, not resourceful.

Cycles, such as of water and nutrients, abound in nature — discards become resources for others. Yet humans continue to ‘make, use, dispose’. One-third of plastic waste globally is not collected or managed¹.

Nature special: The circular economy

There is an alternative. A ‘circular economy’ would turn goods that are at the end of their service life into resources for others, closing loops in industrial ecosystems and minimizing waste (see ‘Closing loops’). It would change economic logic because it replaces production with sufficiency: reuse what you can, recycle what cannot be reused, repair what is broken, remanufacture what cannot be repaired. A study of seven European nations found that a shift to a circular economy would reduce each nation’s greenhouse-gas emissions by up to 70% and grow its workforce by about 4% — the ultimate low-carbon economy (see go.nature.com/biecsc).

The concept grew out of the idea of substituting manpower for energy, first described 40 years ago in a report² to the European Commission by me and Geneviève Reday-Mulvey while we were at the Battelle Research Centre in Geneva, Switzerland. The early 1970s saw rising energy prices and high unemployment. As an architect, I knew that it took more labour and fewer resources to refurbish buildings than to erect new ones. The principle is true for any stock or capital, from mobile phones to arable land and cultural heritage.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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