"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate"
The EUSSR slogan.
The big day is finally here. Sixty
years ago today, France, Germany and Italy, plus the Benelux minnows, signed
the Treaty of Rome creating the European Economic Community, which eventually
morphed into today’s sclerotic, bureaucratic, wealth and jobs destroying,
German run, dying EUSSR. Will it linger on to see three score years plus ten?
Without serious reform, my guess is that it won’t, but there’s no sign of the
rump-EU ex-Britain attempting serious reform.
There’s no sign of Europe attempting to reform its dangerous bankster
sector, led by derivatives gambling mad Deutsche Bank, whose destruction will
set off a chain of events far worse that when Lehman Brothers collapsed. The snake bit EUSSR staggers on from
unresolved crisis to crisis.
Below, Pope Francis thinks the EUSSR
needs a miracle.
EU risks dying, needs new vigor and passion, says Pope Francis
Pope
Francis told Europe's leaders on Friday the continent faced a "vacuum of
values" as they marked the EU's 60th birthday, condemning anti-immigrant
populism and extremism that he said posed a mortal threat to the bloc.
Prime
ministers and presidents from 27 EU member states have descended on Italy to
mark the 1957 founding Treaty of Rome, receiving a papal blessing on the eve of
the anniversary.
However,
celebrations have been tempered by a string of crises, including prolonged
economic turmoil, an influx of migrants and Britain's decision to leave the
bloc, that have raised fears for the future of the union.
"When
a body loses its sense of direction and is no longer able to look ahead, it
experiences a regression and, in the long run, risks dying," Francis told
the leaders gathered in an ornate, frescoed chamber in the heart of the
Vatican.
Just six
nations signed the original treaty in 1957 and on many levels the EU can be
viewed as a success, swelling to embrace 28 countries gathered in the world's
largest trading bloc and blessed with rising life expectancy and solid
prosperity.
But with
anti-European parties gaining support, the pope warned of a growing split
between EU citizens and their institutions and said greater solidarity was the
"most effective antidote to modern forms of populism".
The
Argentinian-born pontiff told the leaders they needed to promote Europe's
"patrimony of ideals and spiritual values" with greater passion and
vigor.
"For
it is the best antidote against the vacuum of values of our time, which
provides a fertile terrain for every form of extremism," he said, mentioning
the attack in London this week by a British-born convert to Islam, who killed
four people.
The pope
has repeatedly criticized Europe over the past five years for its perceived
lack of vision, drawing the ire of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2014 when
he described the EU as an elderly woman who was "no longer fertile and
vibrant".
He
adopted a less hostile tone on Friday, but urged the continent not to close in
on itself and resurrect walls -- a message aimed as much at U.S. President
Donald Trump as at EU leaders struggling to deal with mass immigration.
----Thousands of demonstrators are expected to take to the streets of Rome on Saturday in at least six different rallies called by numerous groups across the political spectrum to protest against various aspects of EU rule.
Some
5,000 police have been called up to patrol the streets and the interior
ministry has warned it will crack down swiftly on any violence.
Anti-migrant
posters have been plastered on boards across the city, calling people to join
one of the many marches to put pressure on the EU to turn back the newcomers.
The EU Has a Lot to Celebrate (and Work to Do)
March 24, 2017 1:00 AM EST
The thing about birthdays is that you can't choose when they fall. Europe's
leaders might have that in mind as they arrive in Italy this weekend to
celebrate the 60th
anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the founding act of the European Union.
The timing of this party is less than ideal.Next week the U.K. will formally announce its departure from the union -- the first such exit in the EU's history. Even putting Brexit aside, Europe has never faced so many different problems all at once: a slow and unbalanced economic recovery; surging populism in France and elsewhere; a revanchist Russia and an erratic, isolationist White House exposing the frailty of Europe's defenses; hundreds of thousands of migrants arriving from the Middle East and Africa, testing the political limits of the free movement of people, one of the principles enshrined in the 1957 treaty.
And the EU's response to all this? So far, unimpressive.
Don't expect that to change this weekend. As well as celebrating the anniversary, Europe's leaders have approaching elections to contend with. France and Germany go to the polls within the next 12 months, and so might Italy. Voters have shown little appetite for the kinds of reforms that the EU needs to be contemplating. However, once those elections are over, Europe had better turn urgently to the repairs the EU needs. And the planning for those reforms can't start too soon.
Strengthening the monetary union ought to be a priority. Next year, the European Central Bank will need to scale back its program of quantitative easing. This policy has helped to assure investors that euro-zone government bonds are relatively safe. As the central bank steps back, fears that the euro system might break up could come to the fore again, calling the safety of some public debts into question and jeopardizing the whole enterprise.
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In other news, an increasingly
exasperated China, seems to be on a campaign of push back. But are any in Japan
and America listening, or even willing to listen? Has a clash between China and
America become inevitable? If it has, will either’s economy survive a trade
war, let alone a real war.
Globalization is a reality, not matter of choice: China's bank governor
Globalization
is a reality for all countries, and is not a matter of choice, the People's Bank
of China's governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, on Saturday.
Zhou
hopes to see clearer language on free trade and globalization at a G20 summit
in July, the Chinese central bank governor said at the Boao Forum for Asia.
This
month, G20 finance ministers and central bankers dropped a pledge to keep
global trade free and open in their communique issued after a gathering in
Germany, acquiescing to an increasingly protectionist United States.
China’s economy is on the verge of a painful credit crunch
Published: Mar 23, 2017 8:17 a.m. ET
One of
China’s most widely used interbank borrowing rates surged to its highest level
since late 2014 earlier this week, stoking worries that a painful credit crunch
could be looming as the country’s central bank moves to tighten monetary
conditions, according to a research note from Goldman Sachs.
China’s
seven-day repurchase (repo) rate shot to 5.5% on Tuesday from 3.85% on Monday,
before settling at 5% on Wednesday.
For
anyone who follows Chinese politics, the sudden jump in interest rates is
hardly surprising: At an annual meeting of China’s parliament that concluded a
week ago, the country’s leaders said that tackling risks related to the
country’s growing pile of risky debt would become a priority.
The
Goldman team, led by MK Tang, the investment bank’s senior China economist,
said it expects interbank rates to remain fairly volatile in the coming days as
the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) prepares for its quarterly macroprudential
assessment, which will take place at the end of March.
Persistently
higher rates could create problems for Chinese companies and financial
institutions that are heavily reliant on short-term credit to finance their
operations, as the chart below illustrates.
---- Economists have widely cited China’s growing pile of bad debt as a potential risk to the global financial system. China has overtaken the eurozone to become the world’s largest banking system by the aggregate value of loans outstanding, as the Financial Times reported earlier this month. China’s economy has relied heavily on debt to drive growth since the global financial crisis.
Last
week, the PBOC decided to raise short-term policy rates for the third time in
three months, mirroring a similar move undertaken by the Federal Reserve just a
day earlier.
---- Lenders in need of short-term liquidity often turn to the repo market, where they can find funding by pledging debt securities as collateral.
China’s
seven-day repo rate is based on transactions in the country’s interbank repo
market that occur between 9 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. local time. It is important to
note that nonbank financial institutions, which account for an increasing share
of loans originated in the world’s second-largest economy, also participate in
this market.
Most
interest-rate swaps that originate in the country reference the 7-day repo rate
as a baseline.
China pledges firm response if Japan interferes in South China Sea
China on
Thursday pledged a firm response if Japan stirs up trouble in the South China
Sea, after Reuters reported on a Japanese plan to send its largest warship to
the disputed waters.
The Izumo
helicopter carrier, commissioned only two years ago, will make stops in
Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka before joining the Malabar
joint naval exercise with Indian and U.S. naval vessels in the Indian Ocean in
July, sources told Reuters.
The trip
would be Japan's biggest show of naval force in the region since World War Two.
"If
Japan persists in taking wrong actions, and even considers military
interventions that threaten China's sovereignty and security... then China will
inevitably take firm responsive measures," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman
Hua Chunying said at a regular press briefing.
China
said on Tuesday that it was waiting for an official word on why Japan plans to
send the warship on the tour through the South China Sea, but that it hoped
Japan would be responsible.
Hua did
not say on Thursday if China had received confirmation of the plan, but said
that the South China Sea issue did not involved Japan and that the country should
"reflect deeply" on its "disgraceful" past invasion of the
Paracel and Spratly Islands.
Japan
controlled the islands during World War Two until its surrender in 1945.
More
Finally, for those with the time this weekend, a
good read. In America this century, it’s increasingly hard to tell the crooks
from the police and prosecutors.
‘Bro, I’m Going Rogue’: The Wall Street Informant Who Double-Crossed the FBI
Guy Gentile flipped, and flipped again.
by Zeke Faux m23 March 2017, 09:00 GMT
On the night he cut a deal with the FBI, Guy Gentile was
on his way to a Connecticut casino for his cousin’s bachelor party. He’d jetted
up from the Bahamas, where he was running an online stock
brokerage that cleared a million dollars a year without much effort on his
part. Then 36, he was a working-class kid who’d finagled his way into the
dicier edges of finance, and he dressed the part, with neatly trimmed stubble,
designer jeans, a silver Rolex, and sunglasses that hung from the collar of his
tight T-shirt, just below a few tufts of chest hair.
Gentile was feeling edgy about traveling stateside. It was July 2012, and regulators had been making calls about a stock play he’d been involved with a few years earlier. He’d been part of a group that the FBI suspected had suckered investors out of more than $15 million by manipulating the market for shares in a Mexican gold mine and a natural gas project in Kentucky.
As Gentile’s plane landed in White Plains, N.Y., he saw the flashing lights of police cars on the tarmac, confirming his fears. Before passengers could disembark, uniformed men came on board. Gentile dialed his lawyer, but the men grabbed the phone out of his hands, handcuffed him, and marched him off the plane.
Soon, two FBI agents picked him up from an airport
detention room and drove him to a neon-lit diner in Newark, N.J., near their
office. They bought Gentile a bacon cheeseburger and a Diet Coke and told him
he had two options: Either they could throw him in jail, seize his assets, and
hand his case to a prosecutor with a 95 percent win rate, or he could help
them catch a bigger fish—and maybe make his problems go away. Gentile didn’t
need to think it over. Whatever you want, he said, I’ll do it.
More, much, much more.
We
hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these
are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness outside of the EUSSR.”
With
grateful thanks to the writers of the US Declaration of Independence.
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