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Le cas français : les arguments de Sarkozy tombent à plat
L’ampleur des manifestations publiques des syndicats français contre l’accroissement légal de l’âge de la retraite de 60 à 62 ans a retenu l’attention du monde entier. Pour les supporters de Sarkozy et pour les observateurs extérieurs, en particulier les commentateurs économiques, la mobilisation des syndicats témoignait une fois de plus cialisfrance24.com du nombrilisme des salariés français, refusant de tirer les conclusions des changements démographiques émergents depuis plusieurs décennies.
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Monday 20 December 2010 in
Rédaction Français
The case of France: the political spin of Sarkozy.
The massive public protest of French unions in opposition to the increase of the legal retirement age from 60 to 62 has drawn world wide attention. For supporters of Sarkozy and many outside France, especially economic commentators, the unions’ struggle was yet another expression of the idiosyncratic self indulgence of French workers. They are being portrayed as being in denial of the changes in the demographic reality which took place in the last six decades. Furthermore, the workers, so the critics claim, fail to understand that the changes proposed by the French government, while reducing their benefits will save them from losing their pensions altogether.
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Monday 20 December 2010 in
Global Markets
Michel Barnier undeterred by abrasive interrogation in the UK parliament
The man in charge of Internal Markets and Services, Michel Barnier in his first appearance before a committee of the British parliament on Monday, said he was “not overly impressed” by the threat of Bankers to flee the City of London for more business-friendly locations in Asia. He labeled such threats “Blackmail”
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Tuesday 14 December 2010 in
Banking
Stanley Fischer, the Consensus Man
At the concluding remarks of the last G20 meeting in London, Gordon Brown Britain’s PM declared: “The old Washington Consensus is over”.
What came to be known among financial circles as “the Washington Consensus” was a set of ‘ten commandments’ which over the years reflected the thinking of the US Treasury, the IMF and the World Bank as to what constitutes a “right “economic policy for developing countries. Critics of the Consensus, had always seen it as a tool of the financial elite of Wall Street and Washington to dictate to countries seeking its assistance an economic policy that serves its interests through its power and control over the IMF and the World Bank.
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Tuesday 7 December 2010 in
Banking
The “Markets” control of Sovereign debt of Greece and other Eurozone countries poses a threat to financial stability
Recent data on the state of the global economy indicate clearly that the crisis is not over. Contrary to earlier assessments it now appears that in the years to come the developed economies are bound to experience, a deep recession. Hence the calls for the adoption of austerity measures and the debate concerning the wisdom of adopting such measures which took place in the last G20 summit.
The proponents of austerity, in particular the Republican Right circles in the US, concentrate their political wrath on Public Debt. They perform an audacious rhetorical spin, when they present the collapse of the private financial sector as a result of governmental fiscal profligacy. In this debate the fiscal hawks have a powerful ally: the “Markets”. [More …]
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Sunday 5 December 2010 in
Global Markets + Public Debt
In a late summer interview to Bloomberg , Weber resumes his campaign to destabilize the Eurozone. His vision of a Decoupled EMU will see Greece exit the Eurozone.
It is summertime and Axel Weber, the powerful president of the Bundesbank decided that it is time to remind the world of his existence in an interview on Bloomberg television in Frankfurt on August 19.
After he failed to derail the Eurozone countries’ efforts to stave off the attack by the financial markets on Greek’s, Spain’s and Portugal’s sovereign debt, he is back. [More …]
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Saturday 21 August 2010 in
Banking
Trying to please the Markets will not work. In a democracy public debt (in the domestic currency) is formally and institutionally the obligation of the nation to its citizens guaranteed by the very same citizens. The “citizen-creditor” is both the lender and the obligor.
That is why the Bank of International Settlement, [BIS] which formulates the standards of Capital Adequacy of Financial Institutions (Basel) authorizes the regulators in any country that abides by the BIS standards, to qualify its government obligations as risk-free. Thus banks and insurance companies do not have to allocate capital against exposure to their own government. Hence the stability and much of the profits of financial institution depend on government debt. [More …]
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Thursday 5 August 2010 in
Public Debt
Who’s manipulating the Greek crisis? Greece won’t go bankrupt, but there are those who want you to think it will.
In the past few months, the world has been watching the economic crisis unfolding in Greece. Most of the voices in the global discourse about the crisis foresee far reaching consequences for Europe and the world. I must dissociate myself from those voices and say that such prognostications are not based on Greece’s real difficulties. There is no denying that Greece ahs substantial fiscal problems. However, at the same time one must remember that the European monetary union has political opponents that are now playing their hand and aspiring to its collapse. No less importantly, one must remember that financial speculators are also players, among them the big investment houses and hedge funds. They gain from instability, and if they can manage to direct it, they rake in huge profits. [More …]
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Thursday 5 August 2010 in
Financial Crisis