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Russia’s “Startling” Proposal To Europe: Dump The US, Join The Eurasian Economic Union | Zero Hedge
Russia’s “Startling” Proposal To Europe: Dump The US, Join The Eurasian Economic Union | Zero Hedge.
Slowly but surely Europe is figuring out that as a result of the western economic and financial blockade of Russian, it is Europe itself that is suffering the most. And while Germany was first to acknowledge this late in 2014 when its economy swooned and is now on the verge of a recession, now others are catching on. Case in point: the former head of the European Commission, and Italy’s former Prime Minister, Romano Prodi who told Messaggero newspaper that the “weaker Russian economy is extremely unprofitable for Italy.”
The other details from Prodi’s statement:
Lowered prices in the international energy markets have positive aspects for the Italian consumers, who pay less for the fuel, but the effect will be only short-term. In the long-term however the weaker economic situation in countries producing energy resources, caused by lower oil and gas prices, mostly in Russia, is extremely unprofitable for Italy, he said.
“The lowering of the oil and gas prices in combination with the sanctions, pushed by the Ukrainian crisis, will drop the Russian GPD by five percent per annum, and thus it will cause cutting of the Italian export by about 50%,” Prodi said.
“Setting aside the uselessness or imminence of the sanctions, one should highlight a clear skew: regardless of the rouble rate against dollar, which is lower by almost a half, the American export to Russia is growing, while the export from Europe is shrinking.”
2015 Will Be All About Iran, China and Russia
2015 Will Be All About Iran, China and Russia
Upcoming 2015 year will be all about further moves towards the integration of Eurasia as the US is progressively squeezed out of Eurasia, Pepe Escobar believes.
BEIJING, December 31 (Sputnik) — Fasten your seatbelts; 2015 will be a whirlwind pitting China, Russia and Iran against what I have described as the Empire of Chaos.
So yes – it will be all about further moves towards the integration of Eurasia as the US is progressively squeezed out of Eurasia. We will see a complex geostrategic interplay progressively undermining the hegemony of the US dollar as a reserve currency and, most of all, the petrodollar.For all the immense challenges the Chinese face, all over Beijing it’s easy to detect unmistakable signs of a self-assured, self-confident, fully emerged commercial superpower. President Xi Jinping and the current leadership will keep investing heavily in the urbanization drive and the fight against corruption, including at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Internationally, the Chinese will accelerate their overwhelming push for new ‘Silk Roads’ – both overland and maritime – which will underpin the long-term Chinese master strategy of unifying Eurasia with trade and commerce.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Asia’s Fragile Caves Face New Risks from Development by Mike Ives: Yale Environment 360
Asia’s Fragile Caves Face New Risks from Development by Mike Ives: Yale Environment 360.
Botanist Li-Bing Zhang has spent years collecting ferns in the caves and limestone formations of southwestern China and neighboring Southeast Asia. When I met him recently in a Vietnamese national park, his research vehicle, a silver van, was bursting with fern specimens. Zhang and two colleagues had found them in tropical forests and at the entrances of 10 caves.
About 10 of the specimens, including a cave fern that his team had found inPhong Nha-Ke Bang National Park in central Vietnam, were probably unknown to science, Zhang said. He planned to test his hunches when he returned to his laboratory at the Missouri Botanical Garden, where he works as an associate curator. “The problem is that a lot of species go extinct unnoticed,” Zhang told me while trekking through a forest in jeans and rubber boots. “That’s why we do our collecting.”
Limestone formations in Southeast Asia, or karsts, which spread across a belt of non-contiguous land nearly the size of California, contain fragile and biodiverse environments. The caves’ dark, humid passages play host to dozens of species of ferns, bats, insects, spiders, mites, blind fish, and many other plants and invertebrates.
oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: It’s Not Just Japan That’s Failed; The “Asian Miracle” Model Has Also Failed
The inevitable result of the centrally planned Asian Miracle Model is credit bubbles and the crippling misallocation of capital in Building Bridges to Nowhere.
Japan’s extraordinary rise from the ashes of World War II created an “Asian Miracle” template that other Asian nations have followed, and continue to follow.The outlines of the model are straightforward.
Saudi Oil Market Fight Shifting to U.S. as Asia Prices Rise – Bloomberg
Saudi Oil Market Fight Shifting to U.S. as Asia Prices Rise – Bloomberg.
Saudi Arabia’s increase in oil prices for Asia signals the world’s biggest crude exporter is shifting the focus of its fight for market share on U.S. buyers.
While Saudi Arabian Oil Co. boosteddifferentials for supplies to Asia next month after cutting some November prices to the lowest in almost six years, American buyers will get another month of reductions. The Middle East producer isn’t prepared to surrender sales in the U.S., where a shale boom has lifted output to the highest in more than 30 years, according to Idemitsu Kosan Co., Japan’s third-largest refiner, and Elements Capital Inc., a Tokyo-based hedge fund that focuses on energy.
Global oil prices slid into a bear market last month on speculation the biggest OPEC producers were discounting their crude to maintain market share, resisting calls to cut output amid slowing demand growth. West Texas Intermediate futures slumped to the lowest in three years yesterday on signs the Saudis are prepared to go even lower to shore up U.S. demand.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Asia ‘not doing enough’ to fight Ebola – Asia-Pacific – Al Jazeera English
Asia ‘not doing enough’ to fight Ebola – Asia-Pacific – Al Jazeera English.
Asian countries are not contributing enough to the global effort to fight Ebola, despite having a wealth of trained medical personnel who could help stop the spread of the deadly virus, World Bank Group president, Jim Yong Kim, said.
Addressing a news conference in South Korea’s capital Seoul on Tuesday, Kim called on leaders across Asia to send trained health professionals to the three West African countries hardest hit by the epidemic.
“Many countries in Asia who could help simply are not [helping], especially when it comes to sending health workers,” Kim told the news conference.
Thousands of healthcare workers are needed to help combat the deadliest outbreak of Ebola since records began in 1976.
The virus has killed nearly 5,000 people, mainly in the West African countries of Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Saudi Oil Market Fight Shifting to U.S. as Asia Prices Increased – Bloomberg
Saudi Oil Market Fight Shifting to U.S. as Asia Prices Increased – Bloomberg.
Saudi Arabia’s increase in crude prices for Asia signals the world’s biggest oil exporter is focusing its fight for market share on the U.S.
While Saudi Arabian Oil Co. boosted differentials for supplies to Asia next month after cutting some November prices to the lowest in almost six years, American buyers will get another month of reductions. The Middle East producer isn’t prepared to surrender sales in the U.S., where a shale boom has lifted output to the highest in more than 30 years, according to Idemitsu Kosan Co., Japan’s third-largest refiner, and Elements Capital Inc., a Tokyo-based hedge fund that focuses on energy.
Global oil prices slid into a bear market last month on speculation the biggest OPEC producers were discounting their crude to maintain market share, resisting calls to cut output amid slowing demand growth. West Texas Intermediate futures resumed the slide today, slumping to the lowest in three years, on signs the Saudis are prepared to go even lower to shore up U.S. demand.
“Asia needs to buy the crude from Saudi Arabia regardless of price fluctuations,” Ken Hasegawa, an energy trading manager at Newedge Group in Tokyo, said by phone. “On the other side of the world, they’re trying to expand their share of the U.S. market and lowered prices.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The dollar decline continues: China begins direct convertibility to Asia’s #1 financial center
The dollar decline continues: China begins direct convertibility to Asia’s #1 financial center.
This morning some of the biggest financial news of the year made huge waves all over Asia.
Yet in the Western press, this hugely important information has barely even been mentioned. (CNBC.com, for example, has yet to report on this story as of 11:45am Eastern…)
So what’s the news?
The Chinese government announced that the renminbi will become directly convertible with the Singapore dollar… effective tomorrow morning.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why Asia Could Be the Next Ebola Hotbed – The Epoch Times
Why Asia Could Be the Next Ebola Hotbed – The Epoch Times.
SINGAPORE—The longer the Ebola outbreak rages in West Africa, the greater chance a traveler infected with the virus touches down in an Asian city.
How quickly any case is detected — and the measures taken once it is — will determine whether the virus takes hold in a region where billions live in poverty and public health systems are often very weak. Governments are ramping up response plans, stepping up surveillance at airports and considering quarantine measures. Still, health experts in the region’s less developed countries fear any outbreak would be deadly and hard to contain.
“This is a non-treatable disease with a very high mortality rate. And even a country like the United States has not been able to completely prevent it,” said Yatin Mehta, a critical care specialist at the Medanta Medicity hospital near New Delhi. “The government is trying. They are preparing and they are training, but our record of disaster management has been very poor in the past.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Protesters take back key parts of Hong Kong – Asia-Pacific – Al Jazeera English
Protesters take back key parts of Hong Kong – Asia-Pacific – Al Jazeera English.
Some of the worst violence since demonstrations began erupts after police try to clear key protest site.Last updated: 18 Oct 2014 09:50
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| Protesters in Hong Kong have reoccupied the Mong Kok site, a key zone in the heart of the city, after police had cleared the area on Friday, sparking some of the most violent confrontations since the demonstrations began three weeks ago.
On Saturday, police used batons and pepper spray against protesters who were shielding themselves with umbrellas on the central district, but were forced into a partial retreat as the sun began to rise, to cheers from the crowd. …click on the link above for the rest of the article… |
