(Click on image to enlarge.)
Spread: The top NASA image shows the powerful ‘loop current’ of faster moving water the oil is hitting which circulates around the Gulf before bending around Florida and up the Atlantic coast. The bottom image shows the extent of the spill
Oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill has for the first time reached a powerful current that could take it to Florida and beyond, say scientists.
A small portion of the slick has entered the so-called ‘loop current’, a stream of faster moving water that circulates around the Gulf before bending around Florida and up the Atlantic coast, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The federal agency responsible for ensuring that an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was operating safely before it exploded last month fell well short of its own policy that inspections be done at least once per month, an Associated Press investigation shows.
Since January 2005, the federal Minerals Management Service conducted at least 16 fewer inspections aboard the Deepwater Horizon than it should have under the policy, a dramatic fall from the frequency of prior years, according to the agency’s records.
Scientists studying video of the gushing oil well have tentatively calculated that it could be flowing at a rate of 25,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil a day. The latter figure would be 3.4 million gallons a day.
“The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.”
Approximately 325,000 gallons of dispersant have been deployed so far in BP’s effort to break up the spreading oil slick before it hits the fragile Gulf coast, and over 500,000 gallons more are available.
North Korea defied condemnation from the rest of the world over the unprovoked sinking of a South Korean warship, and pledged “all-out war” if any retaliation was taken.
The salvaged South Korean 1,200-tonne corvette Cheonan (REUTERS)
In the most serious attack for over 20 years, a North Korean torpedo was found to be responsible for the sinking of the Cheonan, a 300-ft South Korean warship, which sank on March 26 with the loss of 46 lives.
An official report, carried out by South Korean investigators together with teams from the United States, Britain, Australia and Sweden, said the evidence pointed “overwhelmingly to the conclusion that the torpedo was fired by a North Korean submarine.” It added: “There is no other plausible explanation.”
South Korea vowed “resolute countermeasures” against the North and is likely to appeal to the United Nations for further sanctions on the rogue state.
Kelly Cobiella reports that a CBS News team was threatened with arrest by Coast Guard officials in the Gulf of Mexico who said they were acting under the authority of British Petroleum.
Australian customs officers have been given new powers to search incoming travellers’ laptops and mobile phones for pornography, a spokeswoman for the Australian sex industry says.
Fiona Patten, president of the Australian Sex Party, is demanding an inquiry into why a new question appears on Incoming Passenger Cards asking people if they are carrying “pornography”.
Patten said officials now had an unfettered right to examine travellers’ electronic devices, marking the beginning of a new era of official investigation into people’s private lives. She questioned whether it was appropriate to search people for legal R18+ and X18+ material.
“Is it fair that customs officers rummage through someone’s luggage and pull out a legal men’s magazine or a lesbian journal in front of their children or their mother-in-law?” she said.
And remember that the biggest Greek CDS speculator has been the state-controlled Hellenic Post Bank with help from (Yes, you are right!) Goldman Sachs:
The state-controlled Hellenic Post Bank was betting on Greece going bankrupt!
And now…
The Greek central bank in Athens
– Greek central bank hit by short claims (Financial Times):
A former European commissioner has accused Greece’s central bank of encouraging naked short selling of Greek bonds by altering the regulations on its electronic bond trading platform last year.
Vasso Papandreou, a senior deputy in the governing Socialist party, made the charges on Wednesday in a written question to parliament.
She said an extension of the settlement period and the abolition of penalties for failed bond trades had made it easier for speculators to short Greek bonds.
“The Bank of Greece knew the country’s negative fiscal situation. Why did it facilitate the speculation?” asked Ms Papandreou, who is not related to George Papandreou, the Greek prime minister.
Her question, supported by another 10 deputies, reflects growing concern in the Socialist party over an apparent policy contradiction in the handling of Greece’s debt crisis.
“The prime minister launched a truly titanic effort, on a global scale, aimed at unmasking speculators,” she said.
Mr Papandreou claimed the surge in spreads that resulted in Greece seeking a €110bn ($135.4bn, £94.4bn) bail-out last month from its eurozone partners and the International Monetary Fund was the result of sustained shorting of Greek bonds by unnamed speculators and hedge funds.
During a visit to the US earlier this year, he called for international sanctions against naked short selling.
The confusion in policy continued for months, although the prime minister regularly met George Provopoulos, governor of the Bank of Greece, and George Papaconstantinou, the finance minister, to discuss the handling of the country’s debt crisis.
The six-page question addressed to Mr Papaconstantinou set out details of measures taken by the central bank last year. The bank first extended the settlement period for transactions on HDAT, the bond trading platform, from Tplus3 (trading plus three days) to Tplus10.
The change was reportedly made in response to a request from the Association of Greek Banks, which represents market-makers in Greek bonds. But it gave short sellers a longer window of opportunity to push down the price of a Greek bond before delivering it on the settlement date, Ms Papandreou said. The central bank also abolished penalties for investors which did not deliver a bond on the settlement date.
Traders are predicting chaos on the world’s second-largest government bond market after the German authorities on Tuesday announced a ban on all naked short-selling in European public debt, as well as shares in the country’s 10 largest financial institutions.
If you thought the German government was going to be a lapdog for Sarcozy, or worse, was going to fellate Brussels and the ECB, you got a rude shock today.
It appears that the German Government has just plain had enough of the crap that the banksters have tried to pull, and has decided to do what Barack Obama should have done in early 2009.
That is:
No more naked credit crap, especially against sovereigns but not only against sovereigns. No insurable interest, no CDS – period.
Naked shorting will now be actually stopped in 10 leading financial institutions.
Germany has had it with naked shorting of Gold, and specifically noted bank manipulation of gold prices via naked shorts beyond intent or ability to deliver.
Germany has also said that they’re not going to permit Euro derivatives that are not a “bonafide” FX hedge. That is, no more naked bets on Euro movements either.
Hedge funds are going to be regulated, position size limits mandated and enforced, reporting enhanced and a transaction tax is coming.
It’s about damn time.
Oh, and it appears that instead of telling all the banksters what they were going to do and “getting permission” first, or even discussing it with other governments, the German Government did what all governments should do – make up your mind and then do it without giving a good damn whether the banksters or other governments like it – and without giving them input into the decision or notice that it’s coming.
The bid rigging, the game-playing and the rest are all a bunch of crap. I’ve been hollering about this now for more than three years and yet our government spends it’s time fellating the bankers and their dogs instead of enforcing the law.
John Paulson, who made $15 billion betting on the subprime trade, is one manager who may not be replicating the CDS trade he used three years ago. Earlier this month, in a conference call with investors, he called Europe’s debt problems “manageable.”
A weaker euro will benefit French and German exporters, he told clients. Like Bass, he’s been forecastinga jump in inflation, which is why he’s been a buyer of gold and gold producers since at least last year.
J. Kyle Bass smiles in the office of his company, Hayman Capital Partners, in Dallas. (Bloomberg)
May 19 (Bloomberg) — Kyle Bass, who made $500 million in 2007 on the U.S. subprime collapse, is betting Europe’s debt crisis won’t be solved by the $1 trillion loan package the International Monetary Fund and European Union agreed on last week.
“The EU and the IMF effectively went all-in with a bad hand in the highest stakes game of financial poker ever played with the world,” wrote Bass, head of Dallas-based Hayman Advisors LP, in a letter to clients sent after the bailout was announced.
Bass bought gold last week and took other steps to position the fund for hyperinflation and a “competitive devaluation” by Europe, Japan and the U.S. that he is forecasting, according to the letter. Christopher Kirkpatrick, general counsel for Hayman, declined to elaborate on the comments.
BANGKOK, May 19 (Reuters) – The Thai stock exchange was on fire and parts of Bangkok were hit by power blackouts on Wednesday as violence continued, even though anti-government protest leaders surrendered and troops said they were in control.
The stock exchange building was on fire, the exchange’s president told Reuters, while witnesses said major tourist hotels had lost power as black smoke billowed around buildings in the Thai capital.
The stock market had closed early due to the violence.
Thai Defence Minister General Pravit Wongsuwan said a curfew may be imposed on Bangkok to deal with continued unrest after troops dispersed anti-government protesters in a major offensive that killed at least four people and wounded 50 others.
Bangkok was burning today after Thai protest leaders called a halt to months of anti-government demonstrations leaving their followers to wreak havoc in retreat.
The stock exchange and two shopping centres were set alight after a bloody army assault on the barricaded encampment forced the Red Shirts to surrender. Protesters have also set the offices of TV station Channel 3 on fire, trapping 100 staff in the building.
The dawn offensive left five dead, including an Italian journalist, and dozens more were wounded.
Smoke rises from burning fires in downtown Bangkok, Thailand, following the surrender of anti-government leaders to the police Wednesday, May 19, 2010. The Thai government is attempting to end the two month long standoff with Red Shirt protestors with a massive military crackdown. (AP)
BANGKOK — A night curfew has come into force in Bangkok, the first declared in the Thai capital since 1992.
The 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew was enforced Wednesday following an army assault on the anti-government protesters.
At least six people have been killed and nearly 60 injured in clashes.
The last such curfew was declared in 1992, when the army killed dozens of pro-democracy demonstrators seeking the ouster of a military-backed government.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
BANGKOK (AP) — Downtown Bangkok became a flaming battleground Wednesday as an army assault forced anti-government protest leaders to surrender, enraging followers who shot grenades and set fire to landmark buildings, cloaking the skyline in black smoke.
Using live ammunition, troops dispersed thousands of Red Shirt protesters who had been camped in the capital’s premier shopping and residential district for weeks. Five protesters and an Italian news photographer were killed in the ensuing gunbattles and about 60 wounded.
Former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland routinely shredded copies of weekly reports about sexual abuse by priests, according to formerly sealed testimony turned over to Milwaukee County’s district attorney on Thursday.
“The founder of Tradebot, in Kansas City, Mo., told students in 2008 that his firm typically held stocks for 11 seconds. Tradebot, one of the biggest high-frequency traders around, had not had a losing day in four years, he said.”
The reasons for last week’s collapse will be probed for a long time, and likely no firm conclusion will ever be derived, because it was caused by a confluence of numerous factors. While there may be immediate causes for the plunge, the one recurring reason for both that crash, and all future ones, will be dominant role played by HFT traders as they now control market structure when they operate, and the massive vacuum left when they decide to simply shut down when things get too heated and there is no regulated liquidity provider backstop. As the New York Times reports yesterday from your typical HFT bucket shop “as the stock market began to plunge in the “flash crash,” someone here walked up to one of those computers and typed the command HF STOP: sell everything, and shutdown.” A vivid and brief summary of what we have been warning for over a year. Also, we find out that just like Tradebot, which as “one of the biggest high-frequency traders around, had not had a losing day in four years” that Goldman, and all the other big banks who reported a flawless first quarter, are now nothing but one large HFT prop shop: they push the market higher on no volume, and when the selling in size commences they all just shut down. So much for providing liquidity when it is needed. And as for that 4 year track record… What did Madoff go to jail for again?
From the NYT:
Above the Restoration Hardware in this Jersey Shore town, not far from the Navesink River, lurks a Wall Street giant. Here, inside the humdrum offices of a tiny trading firm called Tradeworx, workers in their 20s and 30s in jeans and T-shirts quietly tend high-speed computers that typically buy and sell 80 million shares a day.
But on the afternoon of May 6, as the stock market began to plunge in the “flash crash,” someone here walked up to one of those computers and typed the command HF STOP: sell everything, and shutdown.
Nouriel Roubini, professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. (Bloomberg)
May 18 (Bloomberg) — The crisis engulfing the euro area is not over yet as Greece remains the “tip of an iceberg,” New York University professor Nouriel Roubini said.
“It’s not over,” Roubini said in an interview with BBC radio broadcast today. “What we’re facing right now in the eurozone is a second stage of a typical financial crisis.”
The European Union’s 750 billion-euro ($931 billion) rescue package to stop contagion from Greece hasn’t calmed the markets while questions remain about whether governments are strong enough to implement the austerity measures required, Roubini said. The European Union said today it has transferred the first instalment of emergency loans to Greece, one day before 8.5 billion euros of bonds come due.
CHICAGO – A new analysis of U.S. health data links children’s attention-deficit disorder with exposure to common pesticides used on fruits and vegetables.
While the study couldn’t prove that pesticides used in agriculture contribute to childhood learning problems, experts said the research is persuasive.
“I would take it quite seriously,” said Virginia Rauh of Columbia University, who has studied prenatal exposure to pesticides and wasn’t involved in the new study.
More research will be needed to confirm the tie, she said.
Children may be especially prone to the health risks of pesticides because they’re still growing and they may consume more pesticide residue than adults relative to their body weight.
In the body, pesticides break down into compounds that can be measured in urine. Almost universally, the study found detectable levels: The compounds turned up in the urine of 94 percent of the children.
The kids with higher levels had increased chances of having ADHD, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, a common problem that causes students to have trouble in school. The findings were published Monday in Pediatrics.
Japan will launch the world’s first spacecraft tomorrow drawing its energy from a huge solar-powered sail.
The craft will be launched aboard an H-IIA rocket before unfurling its ultra-thin membrane ‘sail’ half the thickness of a human hair once it is in space Photo: BLOOMBERG
Ikaros – which stands for Interplanetary Kite-Craft Accelerated by Radiation of the Sun – works on the same principle as a yacht, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
It will be launched from the island of Tanegashima aboard an H-IIA rocket before unfurling its ultra-thin membrane “sail” – half the thickness of a human hair – once it is in space.
Solar particles emitted by the sun will hit the 66ft sail to propel it through space towards Venus. Photons bounce off thousands of tiny mirrors to push it through the resistance-free environment.
And as the force acts continuously, a solar sail will eventually be able to reach speeds that are up to ten times greater than any rocket powered by conventional chemicals.
The 307kg craft also has engines that draw their energy from solar cells on the craft and act as a “hybrid” engine, primarily for steering it on its mission.
Yuichi Tsuda, deputy manager for the project, said: “We believe Ikaros will take six months to reach Venus, which we will use to test the craft and its responses, but after that we want it continue to fly for as long and as far as possible.”
The federal agency responsible for ensuring that an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was operating safely before it exploded last month fell well short of its own policy that inspections be done at least once per month, an Associated Press investigation shows.
Since January 2005, the federal Minerals Management Service conducted at least 16 fewer inspections aboard the Deepwater Horizon than it should have under the policy, a dramatic fall from the frequency of prior years, according to the agency’s records.
FILE – This image from a video released by BP PLC shows oil and gas spewing from a yellowish, broken pipe 5,000 feet below the surface. The video released Wednesday May 12, 2010 gives a not-yet-seen glimpse of the leaking well a mile underwater. The stream occasionally can be seen becoming lighter as natural gas mixes into the gusher. BP was confident Saturday May 15, 2010 its latest experiment using a mile-long pipe and stopper would capture much of the oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, even as the company disclosed yet another setback in the environmental disaster. (AP
NEW ORLEANS — BP said Monday it was siphoning more than one-fifth of the oil that has been spewing into the Gulf for almost a month, as worries escalated that the ooze may reach a major ocean current that could carry it through the Florida Keys and up the East Coast.
BP PLC chief operating officer Doug Suttles said Monday on NBC’s “Today” that a mile-long tube was funneling a little more than 1,000 barrels — 42,000 gallons — of crude a day from a blown well into a tanker ship. The company and the U.S. Coast Guard have estimated about 5,000 barrels — 210,000 gallons — have been spewing out each day. Engineers finally got the contraption working on Sunday after weeks of failed solutions — however, millions of gallons of oil are already in the Gulf of Mexico.
A researcher told The Associated Press that computer models show the oil may have already seeped into a powerful water stream known as the loop current, which could propel it into the Atlantic Ocean. A boat is being sent later this week to collect samples and learn more.
“This can’t be passed off as ‘it’s not going to be a problem,'” said William Hogarth, dean of the University of South Florida’s College of Marine Science. “This is a very sensitive area. We are concerned with what happens in the Florida Keys.”
Google is set to move into the living room with a computer operating system that will bring the internet to home televisions.
The company is working with the chipmaker Intel and Sony, the electronics giant, to introduce Google TV this week at a conference for 3,000 Google software developers in San Francisco.
The aim is to get them to create new and innovative applications in the same way that outside developers have created new software programs for smartphones.The system will be based on its Android platform, which was developed 18 months ago for mobile phones. There are already more than 50,000 applications available for Android.
The aim now is to put the web on to televisions via a new generation of television sets and set-top boxes, further blurring the line between home entertainment and computing.
Loveable Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg called his first few thousand users “dumb fucks” for trusting him with their data, published IM transcripts show. Facebook hasn’t disputed the authenticity of the transcript.
Zuckerberg was chatting with an unnamed friend, apparently in early 2004. Business Insider, which has a series of quite juicy anecdotes about Facebook’s early days, takes the credit for this one.
The exchange apparently ran like this:
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend’s Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don’t know why.
Zuck: They “trust me”
Zuck: Dumb fucks
The founder was then 19, and he may have been joking. But humour tells you a lot. Some might say that this exchange shows Zuckerberg was not particularly aware of the trust issue in all its depth and complexity.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s decision to authorize the killing by the Central Intelligence Agency of a terrorism suspect who is an American citizen has set off a debate over the legal and political limits of drone missile strikes, a mainstay of the campaign against terrorism.
The notion that the government can, in effect, execute one of its own citizens far from a combat zone, with no judicial process and based on secret intelligence, makes some legal authorities deeply uneasy.
” Its goal is the capability to “remove all removable aliens,” including “illegal economic migrants, aliens who have committed criminal acts, asylum-seekers (required to be retained by law) or potential terrorists (!).”
In 2002 one of Dr. Rima E. Laibow’s patients, a head of state, told her:
“It’s almost time for the great culling to begin.”
Dr. Rima E. Laibow:
“The WHO is a private corporation just like the Federal Reserve and receives more than two thirds of its funding from the pharmaceutical industry.”
PS: If we were to use all those suppressed great technologies and would treat this planet like our home, then even 13 billion people could easily and happily live on this planet without devastating nature at all. We could turn planet earth into paradise. It’s easy to turn the Sahara desert back into a primeval forest. We have the knowledge and the technology.
Everybody that tells you that we have to reduce the world population has either bought into the propaganda and does not know what he/she is talking about or belongs to the criminal elite that wants to get rid of at least 6 billion people. Why? Because the elite cannot control and suppress that many people in their planned New World Order.
“The World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations’ public health arm, is moving full speed ahead with a controversial plan to impose global consumer taxes on such things as Internet activity and everyday financial transactions like paying bills online — while its spending soars and its own financial house is in disarray.”
The genocidal maniacs at the WHO want to tax the rich so that they can design new “medicines” to “cull” the population of the poor!
That’s right, those lunatic eugenicists WHO brought you the fraudulent H1N1 pandemic that never was (Margaret Chan et al), and spent billions of your dollars to produce not only useless vaccines, but potentially deadly vaccines, which in themselves are largely medical quackery based not on science, but on fraud and greed.
Don’t forget Dr. Len Horowitz, Harvard graduate and epidemiologist, revealed that the WHO introduced the laboratory-made bioweapon, AIDS, to Africa and the World through purposely contaminated vaccines, in 1976.
Now we are expected to pay for their crimes against humanity.
Research and development of more outlandishly expensive and dangerous drugs and vaccines are designed to destroy the health and immune systems of those pesky “useless eaters.” That R&D also includes the development of more effective and virulent strains of bacteria and viruses, which the likes of Dr. Henry Niman, of Recombinomics, loves to rant about. If the disease don’t getcha, the cure surely will!
First create the disease. Next, release it into the population (chemtrails, vaccines, GMO’s, ask Bill Gates). Then, provide the magic elixir, which will cost a fortune and serve as the Grim Reaper. Problem, Reaction, Solution!
Just WHO in the HELL do these psychopaths think they are, and why do they think they have the right to rob people in order to finance their genocidal, population reduction programs? And how long will the public keep rolling up their sleeves welcoming “death” into their bodies?
Gold (and silver) is the real money of the elite. The elite really loves gold, everything else is worthless paper to them.
The elite only‘fears’ and ‘hates’ gold because it shows that all those statements on recovery, green shoots, stimulus packages etc. made by their elite puppets (like Obama, Biden, Bernanke, Clinton, Brown, Darling, King, Merkel, Sarkozy, Berlusconi, Papandreou to name a few) are lies.
There is no recovery and there has nothing been done to help the people. Those elite puppets do everything in their power to loot and bankrupt the people and shovel taxpayer money into the hands of their elite masters.
Only 1 % of the people own gold, which means that the elite can rape 99 % of the people – that remain totally unprotected – with their plans and then present the New World Order as only solution.
“When a country embarks on deficit financing and inflationism you wipe out the middle class and wealth is transferred from the middle class and the poor to the rich.” – Ron Paul
I highly recommend that you read Alan Greenspan’s famous essay on ‘Gold and Economic Freedom’ below.
Why There is Fear and Resentment of the Power of Gold to Discover Value in the Real Economy
There were a few questions raised about the note on the long term chart of the SP 500 deflated by gold which was posted last night, and which is reproduced here above, which read “This is why the financial engineers like Bernanke hate and fear gold; it defies their plans and powers.”
The chart shows something that most investors have suspected. There has been no genuine recovery in the price of stocks since the decline that cannot be fully explained by the monetary inflation of the dollar, as can be discovered by the ultimate store of value, which is gold.
I thought that this was a fairly straightforward observation, but it apparently jarred a few people and their thinking. So perhaps we have some new readers who are not familiar with the long standing animosity towards gold that is uniformly expressed by all those who promote centralized command and control economies, from both the left and the right.
Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, fears that America shares many of the same fiscal problems currently haunting Europe. He also believes that European Union must become a federalised fiscal union (in other words with central power to tax and spend) if it is to survive. Just two of the nuggets from one of the most extraordinary press conferences I have been to at the Bank.
What with all the excitement yesterday over our new Government, I never had time to remark on the Inflation Report press conference. Most of our attention was on what King said about the Government’s fiscal plans (a ringing endorsement). But, as Jeremy Warner has written in today’s paper, it was as if King had suddenly been unleashed. Bear in mind King is usually one of the most guarded policymakers in both British and central banking circles. Not yesterday.
It isn’t often one has the opportunity to get such a blunt and straightforward insight into the thoughts of one of the world’s leading economic players. Most of this stuff usually stays behind closed doors, so it’s worth taking note of. And I suspect that while George Osborne will have been happy to hear his endorsement of the new Government’s policies, Barack Obama and the European leaders will have been far less pleased with his frank comments on their predicament.
The transcript and video are online at the Bank’s website, but below are the extended highlights, all emphasis mine. Well worth checking out.
America, and many other large economies including the UK, share some of the same problems as Greece with its public finances:
The elite has created the entire global financial crisis (looting/stealing the wealth from the people and destroying their children’s future) and now as I said before they present you their New World Order as the one and only solution to all the problems that they have created. The New World Order will rape the people of all their freedoms and wealth left, turning them into slaves. The New world Order is now here.
I will add more recent info from Gerald Celente at the end of the following article.
Rise up (peacefully) or fall.
Move comes as Spain, U.K. target deficits
EU Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, left, at a news conference with EU commissioner for economic affairs Olli Rehn in Brussels on Wednesday.(AP)
Senior administrators of the European Union proposed on Wednesday that they be given unprecedented power to scrutinize the spending plans of countries before national parliaments vote on those budgets.
The EU’s executive commission’s bid was a move to crack down on widespread government overspending and to begin to deal with the debt crisis that threatens the exchange value of the euro.
The commission is the administrative arm of the European Parliament and is independent of national governments.
It also proposed serious financial penalties for countries that break the rules – essentially forcing governments to pay a financial penalty that could eventually be returned to them.
The move came as European governments scramble to deal with their deficits.
Spain announced Wednesday it will cut civil servants’ salaries this year by an average of five per cent starting in June.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero also told parliament his government would suspend automatic inflation adjustments for civil service pensions, cut foreign aid and domestic spending by $7.6 billion US and eliminate a tax break for couples that have babies or adopt a child.
Britain’s newly formed coalition government pledged to begin tackling the U.K.’s record $236 billion US deficit, beginning with an immediate cut in government spending of $9 billion.
More Greek strikes planned
At the same time, Greece’s two main public and private sector unions announced a new general strike to protest pension reforms for May 20.
The proposal by the EU commission would deepen the ties that bind Europe’s currency union just when some analysts predict the debt crisis will eventually cause its disintegration.
Olli Rehn, the EU commissioner for economic affairs, said the EU’s moves would ensure that national governments’ spending plans were “consistent with European objectives.”
The commission would need the backing of EU governments before it can draft more detailed rules for them to vote on and put in place.
Last Updated: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 | 12:50 PM ET
With the liquidity crisis surrounding the rollover of Greek debt subsiding, the probability of default for that country has plummeted from nearly even odds to just over one in three.
Last Week’s Numbers: 06 May 2010
Meanwhile, other state and national governments are showing continued stress. Venezuela tops the list with a CDS spread of 1049 and a risk of default now over 50%. Argentina and Pakistan are also now ahead of Greece which is now only the 4th most likely government in the world to default.
Most recent numbers: 11 May 2010
The usual suspects are on the list including Dubai, Ukraine and Latvia. The one thing to notice is that California has now cracked the top ten with a 20% default probability. For California muni bond holders, this number bears watching.
The congressional audit would examine the Fed’s emergency aid program and disclose previously secret recipients of bailout money.
Reporting from Washington The Senate voted 96 to 0 on Tuesday to authorize a congressional audit of the secretive Federal Reserve Board’s emergency aid program and full disclosure of who got the money, a plan that could reveal more details about government help for embattled investment firm Goldman Sachs.
Under the plan, Congress’ Government Accountability Office would conduct a top-to-bottom audit of all the Federal Reserve’s emergency activities since the economic crisis began in December 2007. The Fed also would have to post on its website all recipients of money from the more than $2 trillion in emergency aid that’s been disbursed since then.
The GAO also would look into whether the financial deals involved conflicts of interest. It’s common for members of the board of directors of the powerful Federal Reserve Bank of New York, for example, also to be executives or directors of banks that got government bailout money.
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