EU

Report: Imaginary Cows And Non-Existant Lemon Groves ‘Cost EU Taxpayers £1.2 Billion’

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Imaginary cows and non-existant lemon groves are among the fraudulent claims for European Union funding that have cost taxpayers £1.2bn in the last year, a new report shows.


In one case, thousands of pounds was paid out to livestock owners in Slovenia for ‘non-existent’ cattle Photo: GETTY

The number of “irregular payments” last year doubled and are now costing taxpayers £3.3 million a day.

According to the European Commission’s Fight Against Fraud report irregularities and fraud in the Common Agricultural Policy, which accounts for half the EU budget, cost £108.5m, up 23 per cent.

However, the worst area for fraud in 2009 was “cohesion policy”, where funds go to Europe’s poorest regions and which takes up more than one third of the whole EU budget.

Suspected fraud and irregularities here cost £1.06bn last year, an increase of 109 per cent on the previous year. About two-thirds of alleged EU fraud concerns six countries: Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Italy, Poland and Spain.

Read moreReport: Imaginary Cows And Non-Existant Lemon Groves ‘Cost EU Taxpayers £1.2 Billion’

Irish Bond Yields Shooting To Record And Another Prof. Warns That It’s Just One Month Until Endgame

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Irish 10-year yields are shooting to new records this morning.

What’s going on? Now another University College Dublin professor, Karl Whelan, is warning that things could collapse in one month when the Irish budget is due.

Yesterday it was Colm McCarthy, also a UCD professor, making similar comments that got people nervous again.

Joe Weisenthal | Nov. 2, 2010, 4:47 AM

Source:  The Business Insider

Elite Puppet David Cameron’s U-Turn Denies Britain EU Referendum

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David Cameron, like Gordon Brown before, is an elite puppet.

President Obama has already been proven to be worse than even G. W. Bush.

Presidents or Prime Ministers are not elected, but selected.


David Cameron has now backed plans to sneak changes into the Lisbon Treaty

BRITONS have been robbed of the chance to vote on a power grab by Brussels despite promises of a referendum.

In the wake of the Lisbon Treaty fiasco, David Cameron vowed Britain would never again give away powers to Brussels without first holding a referendum.

In a spectacular U-turn, however, Mr Cameron has now backed plans to sneak changes into the Lisbon Treaty without triggering referendums across Europe.

It is a significant victory for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was last night dining with the Camerons at ­Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country retreat in Buckinghamshire.

At the Council of Ministers, Europe’s prime ministers and presidents backed “a limited treaty change” to deliver tighter fiscal discipline across the EU and a ­permanent bail-out fund for members of the eurozone. The change will create an “economic government” for Europe.

Nigel Farage, frontrunner to lead the UK Independence Party, said: “It is one of the most massive power grabs they have ever attempted but because it is so ­devilishly complicated this might just sneak through by default. But make no mistake, these are draconian powers and without a shadow of a doubt this should trigger a referendum.”

Leaders are petrified that any change to the EU treaties would spark referendums in the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands.

In Britain the EU Referendum Campaign has been launched calling on the ­Government to give the country the vote denied when Gordon Brown ratified the Lisbon Treaty. More than 5,000 Sunday Express readers signed up after we highlighted the campaign last week.

Read moreElite Puppet David Cameron’s U-Turn Denies Britain EU Referendum

Fluoride: A Toxic Poison That Accumulates In The Pineal Gland

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See also:

– Fluoride: A Chronological History (Must-read!)

– Scientific Facts on the Biological Effects of Fluoride

– The Drugging Of America with Fluoride

– Fluoride & The Manhattan Project (Declassified Government Documents)

– Fluoridation: A Horror Story

– Fluoride: The Phosphate Connection


Fluoride, added to the water supply of many cities and counties and sold by WalMart in its nursery water, has a tendency to accumulate not only in developing teeth causing discoloration, and in bones making them brittle. The mineral is associated with cancer and it also accumulates in the pineal gland, an important hormone control center, where it wreaks considerable havoc.

Paul Connett of Fluoride Action Network comments on Jennifer Luke’s research which was part of her PhD thesis and had just been published in Caries Research under the title: Fluoride Deposition in the Aged Human Pineal Gland.

Fluoride is a poison, yet we add it to our water and toothpaste and even call it a supplement, although it has no nutritional value. Its medicinal value – the prevention of tooth decay – is the official explanation for adding the toxic mineral to the water supply. But that value is far outweighed by its toxic side effects – amply documented by Paul Connett in his Statement of Concern.

Recent European Union legislation on food supplements lists fluoride as an essential element to offer for supplementation. This is somewhat ironic when contrasted with the European legislators’ feigned concern over the putative toxicity of vitamins and their efforts to limit dosages of these vital nutrients in order to “protect public health”.

We also use fluoride in many household items, such as non-stick frying pans, high-tech water repellent fabrics and others. Recently, at least some timid attempts to start assessing the disease burden caused by fluoride are under way. The Journal of Water Health carries an article on this research. Meanwhile in the US, the FDA has decided that fluoride should be allowed in bottled water, perhaps in deference to WalMart’s offerings.

The use of fluoride for “health” reasons is one of the great insanities of our times. Could it be just by chance that the Germans and Russians both used fluoride to make prisoners stupid and docile or that the US government faced legal action over the toxic effects in the environment of this nuclear waste by-product?

Perhaps the push for ‘enriching’ our water and our foods with fluoride has some ulterior motive that has little to do with health. Be that as it may, the campaign for fluoridation is stil in full swing and health authorities are pushing the poison as if their monthly paychecks depended on it.

Jennifer Luke’s PhD thesis on fluoride and its accumulation in the pineal gland – Paul Connett says that research might just be the scientific straw that breaks the camel’s back:

– – –

Fluoride & the Pineal Gland: Study Published in Caries Research

The wheels of science grind very slowly. Finally, the first half of the work that was the subject of Jennifer Luke’s Ph.D. thesis; presentation in Bellingham, Washington (ISFR conference) in 1998 and a videotaped interview I had with her (see www.fluoridealert.org/videos.htm), has been published in Caries Research.

In my view this work is of enormous importance and could be (or should be) the scientific straw that breaks the camel’s back of fluoridation.

When Luke found out that the pineal gland – a little gland in the center of the brain, responsible for a very large range of regulating activities (it produces serotonin and melatonin) – was also a calcifying tissue, like the teeth and the bones, she hypothesized it would concentrate fluoride to very high levels. The gland is not protected by the blood brain barrier and has a very high perfusion rate of blood, second only to the kidney.

Luke had 11 cadavers analyzed in the UK. As she predicted she found astronomically high levels of fluoride in the calcium hydroxy apatite crystals produced by the gland. The average was 9000 ppm and went as high as 21,000 in one case. These levels are at, or higher, than fluoride levels in the bones of people suffering from skeletal fluorosis. It is these findings which have just been published.

Read moreFluoride: A Toxic Poison That Accumulates In The Pineal Gland

EU plans for direct tax, leading to a ‘transfer of sovereignty’ and a British referendum

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he European Union’s plans to levy direct taxes on Britons and those in other member countries would amount to a “transfer of sovereignty” that would force the Coalition Government to hold a Europe referendum.


Janusz Lewandowski, the European budget commissioner, admitted that his plan would have to be ‘ratified’ in every country Photo: REUTERS

Janusz Lewandowski, the European budget commissioner, has told The Daily Telegraph that his recent proposals to finance the EU through VAT, carbon, aviation or financial transaction taxes would touch on “holy” elements of national sovereignty.

So sensitive is the plan, tabled last week, to move from payments made by national treasuries to giving the EU “own resources” through direct European taxation, that it would have to be “ratified” in every country, the commissioner admitted.

“It needs ratification because it is prerogative of a national state to set its own taxes. No taxation without representation – it must be ratified,” said the commissioner. “This is a sacred prerogative of national parliaments.”

Under the Coalition Government’s promised “referendum lock” any transfer of powers, such as tax raising powers, from Westminster to Brussels would be subject to a popular vote by Britons at a time when public hostility to the EU is growing.

Bill Cash, the Conservative chairman of the powerful House of Commons scrutiny committee, insisted that the question of EU taxation would be examined by MPs in terms of the referendum pledge.

“EU taxation proposals are invasive of British democracy’s constitutional position. We will be closely examining these matters in the light of the referendum requirement,” he said.

Read moreEU plans for direct tax, leading to a ‘transfer of sovereignty’ and a British referendum

Armed EU guards to patrol Greece-Turkey border to stem steeply increasing illegal immigration

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A new force of armed European guards is to be dispatched to Greece to patrol the country’s border with Turkey in an attempt to stem steeply increasing illegal immigration into Europe.

The deployment of the Rapid Intervention Border Teams, assembled from the border guard forces of other European countries, will be the first time Brussels has deployed multinational armed units on the EU’s external land border.

The teams are to arrive in Greece within days, the European commission announced today , although the precise numbers and makeup are yet to be decided.

A commission official said: “This is a new front. The teams are armed, but they can only use their arms in self-defence.”

Struggling to cope with the hundreds of migrants who are entering Greece every day through an inhospitable, unmonitored stretch of the country’s border with Turkey near the town of Edirne, Athens appealed to Brussels for help at the weekend.

“The flows of people crossing the border irregularly have reached alarming proportions,” said Cecilia Malmström, commissioner for home affairs. “Greece is manifestly not able to face this situation alone.”

Some eight out of 10 migrants entering Europe this year have arrived in Greece via Turkey, according to Brussels. Some are illegal economic migrants, at the mercy of gangs of human traffickers; many are Iraqi and Afghan asylum seekers, whose treatment by the Greek authorities the United Nations and the EU regard as indefensible.

Read moreArmed EU guards to patrol Greece-Turkey border to stem steeply increasing illegal immigration

Cost of Funding EU Agencies Triples to More Than £2 Billion

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The cost of funding European Union committees and agencies has more than tripled since 2005 and is on course to reach more than £2 billion next year, new research shows.


Cost of European Union committees and agencies is soaring Photo: Corbis

Compiled by Open Europe, the figures come as David Cameron prepares to go to Brussels this week to fight off plans to increase the overall budget of the EU by six per cent.

The Prime Minister has made clear that he considers that it is unacceptable for British taxpayers to pay more to Europe at a time when widespread spending cuts are being imposed at home.

As well as an increase in overall spending, the European Commission has proposed introducing an eight per cent rise in the 2011 budget for EU agencies and committees.

It would be used to open five new agencies, as well as boosting the budgets for 47 existing organisations, which together employ nearly 10,000 people.

Siân Herbert, of Open Europe, said: “The huge increase in the cost of EU agencies stands in stark contrast to the deep cuts facing the public sector in member states. It’s rather unbelievable that the EU remains immune from the austerity measures sweeping the rest of Europe.”

Read moreCost of Funding EU Agencies Triples to More Than £2 Billion

Warmists Plot Secretly to Kill off The Medieval Warming Period Again

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Pretend ruins of fake 12th century Viking church moved to Greenland by Booker, Delingpole, North et al last year in cynical bid to pretend the MWP actually existed

Remember how one of the great ambitions of the Climategate “scientists” was to “contain” the “putative” Medieval Warming Period? Well – guess what – they’re STILL at it.

Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Jonathan Overpeck, Eugene Wahl, Malcolm Hughes – just about anyone who’s anyone from the Climategate emails, in fact – have all been on a clandestine boondoggle to sunny Portugal, there to conspire how best to obliterate that embarrassing and inconvenient period of bounteous warmth between around 900 AD and 1280 AD known as the MWP.

Anthony Watts has the full story. The bit that interests me most is the size of their carbon footprint? And even more so, who actually grant-funded all these shysters to fly to Portugal for their weekend reality-denial fest? And even more, more so if it was us – which of course it was, via our governments, the UN and the EU – why we can’t have our money back NOW.

Wattsy’s site was responsible for another classic this week which you must read if you haven’t already: Willis Eschenbach’s magisterial and hilarious essay Eight tenths of a degree? Think of the Grandchildren! I met Eschenbach at Heartland: terrifyingly loud shirts and an aura of tousled levity and almost childlike sweetness which might give you the impression that he’s just a barmy eccentric. Make no mistake, though, this man is a genius. I’ll reprint the opening paragraphs to give you a taste:

James Hansen and others say that we owe it to our Grandchildren to get this climate question right. Hansen says “Grandchildren” with a capital G when he speaks of them so I will continue the practice. I mean, for PR purposes, Grandchildren with a capital letter outrank even Puppies with a capital letter, and I can roll with that.

In any case Hansen got me to thinking about the world of 2050. Many, likely even most people reading this in 2010 will have Grandchildren in 2050. Heck, I might have some myself. So I started to consider the world we will leave our Grandchildren in 2050.

In a recent post here on WUWT, Thomas Fuller floated a proposal that we adopt a couple of degrees as the expected temperature rise over the century. He says in the comments to his thread that

I think we owe it to the people of the world to give them an idea of how much warming they can expect, so they can plan their buildings, businesses, roads and lives. They matter. They don’t care how much of it is due to CO2 or how much is rebound from a LIA due to forcings we don’t understand. They don’t. They probably shouldn’t.

We have temperature rises that we can almost trust from 1958 that show a trend of about 2 degrees for this century if things go on.

To start with, I don’t think we owe people anything more than the scientific truth as we understand it. And if we don’t understand it, as in the case of what the climate may be like over the rest of this century, we definitely owe it to the people to simply say “We don’t know”. Those three little words, so hard to say … so no, we don’t owe people a number if we don’t have one.

Read the rest here. If you haven’t the time let me summarise his truly scary conclusion: that by 2050 our planet might possibly have warmed by….

Eight tenths of a degree!

How will our grandchildren cope?

Read moreWarmists Plot Secretly to Kill off The Medieval Warming Period Again

EU Wants To Tax Europeans To Replace National Contributions

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• European commission proposal would end Britain’s rebate
• Brussels wants to borrow large sums for infrastructure projects


European commission president, José Manuel Barroso, also wants to reform the EU’s ‘Byzantine set of corrections and trade-offs’. Photograph: Georges Gobet/AFP/Getty Images

The EU executive made its case today for a new system of European taxation to streamline and underpin Brussels’ budget, replacing the contentious regime of national contributions as the basis for EU funding.

In the opening salvo of what promises to be a bruising, two-year battle to set EU spending up to 2020, the European commission argued for a phased end to, or reduction of, national contributions and the introduction of new budgets based on “own resources”, tax revenue directly levied by Brussels.

The new system could involve a dedicated European VAT rate, with the money raised going to Brussels, as well as EU taxes on air travel, carbon emissions, banks or financial market transactions.

“The current system of EU financing has evolved piecemeal into a confusing and opaque mix of contributions from national budgets, corrections and rebates,” the commission said. “A fresh look is essential, to re-align EU financing with principles of autonomy, transparency and fairness.”

The commission, presenting its budget reform plan to the European parliament in Strasbourg, also said that Brussels should be empowered to borrow large sums on the markets, using the EU budget as collateral by issuing bonds to underwrite major infrastructure projects. It also wanted the current seven-year budget planning periods extended to 10 years.

“The commission does not believe that the current mix of member state contributions and own resources is the right one,” said José Manuel Barroso, the commission president. “This is not a question of an EU tax but of finding new sources of financing to gradually replace member states’ contributions.” He added: “We also need to look at the byzantine set of corrections and trade-offs,” indicating an end to the £2.6bn annual rebate to the UK.

Read moreEU Wants To Tax Europeans To Replace National Contributions

Bayer Knowingly Sold AIDS-Infected Drugs Worldwide For Decades (Flashback)

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See also:

– Bayer AG admits GMO contamination out of control

–  Vaccines and Medical Experiments on Children, Minorities, Woman and Inmates (1845 – 2007)



Bayer Sells AIDS-Infected Drug Banned in U.S. in Europe, Asia – Unearthed documents show that the drug company Bayer sold millions of dollars worth of an injectable blood-clotting medicine — Factor VIII concentrate, intended for hemophiliacs — to Asian, Latin American, and some European countries in the mid-1980s, although they knew that it was tainted with AIDS.

Bayer knew about the fact that the drug was tainted and told the FDA to keep things under wraps while they made a profit off of a drug that infected its patients. If these allegations are true, then both Bayer and the FDA are at fault for this catastrophe.

FDA regulators helped to keep the continued sales hidden, asking the company that the problem be ”quietly solved without alerting the Congress, the medical community and the public,” according to the minutes of a 1985 meeting.

EU to Back Sale of Meat And Milk From Cloned Animals

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Related articles:

– Europe: Meat From Cloned Animals to Enter The Food Chain ‘Through An Open Door’

A new report suggests that the offspring of cloned animals could be consumed

The sale of meat and milk from the offspring of cloned farm animals is set to be backed by EU Commissioners despite mass consumer opposition.

A huge majority of the public is against clone animal farming, according to studies in Britain and across Europe.

Concerns surround the ethics of the process, the welfare of the animals and a lack of research on food safety. However, a leaked report to be discussed by the EU’s College of Commissioners today comes out in favour of food from the offspring of clones.

Alarmingly, it appears this food would not have to be labelled, leaving families completely in the dark about what they are putting in their mouths.

Specifically, the report proposes a temporary five-year ban on the sale of meat and milk from clones, but there would be no ban on food from their offspring.

If this policy is adopted, European farms could be populated by cloned supersize animals used as breeding stock for cows, pigs and sheep that are reared for food.

Clones themselves can suffer a range of painful conditions, including malformed organs and gigantism. Many die in the womb or soon after birth.


What’s in your shopping bag? The Daily Mail revealed how meat from two clone-offspring bulls and one veal calf had been sold in butcher shops in Scotland, North-East England, London and Belgium

But the Commission and the Government take the view that meat and milk from the offspring of a clone is effectively normal and therefore no ban or labelling is required.

The Daily Mail revealed in the summer that more than 100 cattle – pedigree Holstein milking cows – which are the offspring of clones are being raised on British farms.

We also revealed how meat from two clone-offspring bulls and one veal calf had been sold in butcher shops in Scotland, North-East England, London and Belgium.

The Food Standards Agency has made clear it believes it is illegal to sell meat and milk from these sources without first getting its approval.

Read moreEU to Back Sale of Meat And Milk From Cloned Animals

Sarkozy and Merkel: We Need A New EU Treaty

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The coalition government faces the prospect of a referendum on Europe and the outbreak of political warfare between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats after Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel demanded a new EU treaty within two years.


Nicholas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel walk at a beach in Deauville Photo: REUTERS

Following a meeting in France, the French President threw his weight behind calls from the German Chancellor for changes to the Lisbon Treaty in order to prevent future government debt crises threatening the euro zone.

The move is a serious setback for David Cameron because he has opposed any fresh EU institutional changes and recently renewed his “referendum lock” pledge to hold a popular vote on any future treaty that passes new powers to Brussels.

In a joint statement with Chancellor Merkel, President Sarkozy proposed revisions to the EU treaty in order to bring in tough sanctions against countries that threatened the euro’s stability by running high levels of government debt and to set up permanent EU bail-out fund.

“Germany and France together will put forward a revision to the treaties so that political sanctions can be made and for support mechanisms to be made ongoing in order to ensure the financial stability of the euro zone,” he said.

Read moreSarkozy and Merkel: We Need A New EU Treaty

France Strike: Hundreds of Flights Cancelled, Airlines Told to Carry Enough Fuel For Return Journey

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Hundreds of flights to and from France will be cancelled on Tuesday with another 24-hour strike planned by air traffic controllers.



Half the flights in and out of Paris Orly airport and nearly a third of all flights to all other airports will be scrapped, according to the French civil aviation authority.

Ryanair has already cancelled 200 flights and British Airways says it expects “delays and disruption” to its services.

A similar walkout last week forced hundreds of cancellations, with short-haul flights the worst affected.

Charles de Gaulle airport has already reported disruption to flights on Monday after a number of refuelling staff went on strike.

Airlines running short-haul flights have been told to carry enough fuel for their return journeys, following strikes at 12 of the country’s oil refineries. It is reported that around a quarter of petrol filling stations across the country have run dry.

Read moreFrance Strike: Hundreds of Flights Cancelled, Airlines Told to Carry Enough Fuel For Return Journey

Battle Over Nicolas Sarkozy’s Cuts: Defiant Millions Hit The Streets

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The return of students and workers in mass protests made the right shiver. But there was no battle of the barricades


Protests in Lyon against pension reforms. Photograph: Jean-Pierre Clatot/AFP

The clouds hung heavily over the Place de la République and the statue of Marianne, France’s heroine, was draped with demonstrators’ balloons.

As protesters marched on the historic Parisian site of proletarian revolt, 17-year-old Romane scowled at the rain-filled sky. “At least this is proof we’re not just here for the good weather,” she said. On her jacket was pinned a placard scrawled with marker pen. “Carla, we’re like you,” it read. “We’ve been screwed by Sarko too.”

Nicolas Sarkozy had feared that the rentrée – the time after the holidays when France returns to normal – would be warm, encouraging protesting masses on to the wide, Haussmann-designed boulevards, and he was right to be worried.

Languishing in the polls and engaged in an almighty battle to push through his flagship pension reform – taking the retirement age from 60 to 62 – the man once cast by some as the Gallic Margaret Thatcher is facing his most testing showdown with the notoriously bellicose unions.

The demonstration that drew people out in their hundreds of thousands was the fifth since last month, and Tuesday will bring another. Last week the protest movement snowballed, with strikes that closed schools, led to flights being cancelled and stopped trains. Fuel refineries halted production and parts of the country are already suffering shortages.

Read moreBattle Over Nicolas Sarkozy’s Cuts: Defiant Millions Hit The Streets

German Outwits EU Light Bulb Ban

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BERLIN (Reuters) – A German entrepreneur is bypassing a European Union ban on light bulbs of more than 60 watts by marketing his own brand as mini heaters.

Siegfried Rotthaeuser and his brother-in-law have come up with a legal way of importing and distributing 75 and 100 watt light bulbs — by producing them in China, importing them as “small heating devices” and selling them as “heatballs.”

To improve energy efficiency, the EU has banned the sale of bulbs of over 60 watts — to the annoyance of the mechanical engineer from the western city of Essen.

Rotthaeuser studied EU legislation and realized that because the inefficient old bulbs produce more warmth than light — he calculated heat makes up 95 percent of their output, and light just 5 percent — they could be sold legally as heaters.

On their website (http://heatball.de/), the two engineers describe the heatballs as “action art” and as “resistance against legislation which is implemented without recourse to democratic and parliamentary processes.”

Costing 1.69 euros each ($2.38), the heatballs are going down well — the first batch of 4,000 sold out in three days.

Rotthaeuser has pledged to donate 30 cents of every heatball sold to saving the rainforest, which the 49-year-old sees as a better way of protecting the environment than investing in energy-saving lamps, which contain toxic mercury.

Read moreGerman Outwits EU Light Bulb Ban

Ireland: State can no longer borrow money

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See also:

– Irish ‘Groundhog Day’ & Ireland Cancels All Remaining 2010 Bond Auctions Due To Market ‘Turbulence’

– Europe: Bond Refinancings Outweigh Deficit Reduction Plans

IRELAND CAN no longer borrow on the international markets because its “sovereign creditworthiness is gone”, Fine Gael finance spokesman Michael Noonan has said. He said that “Anglo Irish Bank was supposed to be too big to fail”, but “it was too big to save. That is the real position.”

Mr Noonan warned that “we have almost reached the point of the rescue of Anglo Irish Bank bringing down this country with the Minister being forced this morning to announce the closure of the bond markets.

“The closure of the bond market means the sovereign State is in deep trouble because it cannot borrow money.”

Speaking during the Dáil debate on the total expected exchequer cost of bailing out the banking system, Mr Noonan said the Government’s banking strategy had collapsed.

Mr Noonan described the figures as an “appalling disaster” and said the Government made the “calamitous mistake of guaranteeing all Anglo Irish Bank’s liabilities”. Months after nationalistation, the Minister said the potential liability would not exceed €4.5 billion.

“I accept you were misled and misinformed and so on, but there is a huge gap between €4.5 billion and the €34 billion potential final cost of Anglo,” he told Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan.

Ireland was now “left in the situation of having to cancel next month’s bond auction” because the country does not have creditworthiness any more and could not sell the bonds at an affordable price. That is the bottom line on the banking strategy the Government has pursued for two years.”

Read moreIreland: State can no longer borrow money

Europe: Bond Refinancings Outweigh Deficit Reduction Plans

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Oct. 4 (Bloomberg) — Record refinancing needs for Europe’s highest-deficit nations may overshadow spending cuts next year and increase the risk that more countries will follow Greece in requiring a rescue to avoid default.

Euro-region governments have to repay 582 billion euros ($803 billion) of debt in 2011, up from 521 billion euros this year, according to estimates from ING Groep NV. Spain has to roll over almost 20 percent of its outstanding loans, government figures show. Portugal has 23 billion euros of debt coming due and Ireland has more than 10 billion euros, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“I can’t ignore what’s going on in Ireland and Portugal, and the path of least resistance is for wider spreads or higher yields for both,” said Padhraic Garvey, head of developed market strategy at ING in Amsterdam. “I’m not predicting they will need a bailout next year. I’m just highlighting the risk.”

The extra yield investors demand for holding 10-year Irish bonds rather than German bunds rose last week to 454 basis points, the most since the introduction of the euro. It spread was at 418 basis points today. The yield premium for 10-year Greek bonds was 786 basis points more than Germany, the most of any euro nation. It was 183 basis points for Spain today and 386 basis points for Portugal.

“I’m not sure if yield spreads at these levels justify the risk,” said Christoph Kind, head of asset allocation at Frankfurt Trust, which oversees about $20 billion. “There is a significant amount of debt that’s needed to be refinanced, and we don’t know what the market situation will be like. You may argue that you get rewarded for taking that risk given the high yields. We prefer to be cautious.”

Backstop Fund

A 750 billion-euro backstop arranged by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund has failed to allay investor concern that some of the so-called euro-peripheral countries may buckle under the weight of their debt.

Spain had its top credit rating cut one level on Sept. 30 to Aa1 from Aaa by Moody’s Investors Service, which cited the nation’s “weak” economic outlook. The Irish government said the same day that costs to bail out the country’s banks may reach about 50 billion euros, equal to roughly 33 percent of the nation’s output.

Read moreEurope: Bond Refinancings Outweigh Deficit Reduction Plans

Irish ‘Groundhog Day’ & Ireland Cancels All Remaining 2010 Bond Auctions Due To Market ‘Turbulence’

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See also:

– Ireland: State can no longer borrow money

– Europe: Bond Refinancings Outweigh Deficit Reduction Plans

Ireland Cancels All Remaining 2010 Bond Auctions Due To Market “Turbulence”

Apparently in Ireland, a global stock market that surges up 10% in a month to celebrate the latest obliteration of the purchasing power of the American middle class is considered “turbulence.” This is precisely the excuse given by Irish PM Brian Cowen when asked why he has cancelled all bond auctions for the rest of the year. Surely, the market is buying it. Cowen also added that he doesn’t need funds at rates of 6.8 to 6.9%. What is hilarious is that he will need the funds much more in 3 months when the rates are double that, now that the country is openly nationalizing each and every bank, and will fund these “acquisitions” with tens of billions it doesn’t have.

From Bloomberg:

Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen  said that his government decided to cancel bond auctions for the rest of the year because of “turbulence” in bond markets, and the state is already funded into next year. He made the comments in an interview with national broadcaster RTE.

“We are funded until next May,” Cowen said. “There has been such turbulence in the markets, since we don’t require those funds immediately why would we be going to get funds at rates such as 6.8 or 6.9 percent.”

(I could not find this Bloomberg article anymore. ???)

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/30/2010 12:55 -0500

Source: ZeroHedge

Irish `Groundhog Day’ Leaves Lenihan Battling Biggest Deficit

Oct. 1 (Bloomberg) — It must feel like deja vu for taxpayers and investors in Ireland.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said yesterday he cleaned up the mess left by “reckless” bankers. Now he has to turn back to tackling the largest budget deficit in the history of the euro region after the premium bondholders demand to buy Irish debt climbed to a record this week.

“It’s a bit like groundhog day, like you’ve been on the wrong road and have to come back and start all over again,” said Alan McQuaid, chief economist at Bloxham Stockbrokers in Dublin. “It’s a long way home.”

Ireland was among the first countries to react to the global credit crisis, avoiding going the way of Iceland, or later Greece, by bolstering its banks and then cutting spending and raising taxes. As what was Europe’s fastest-growing economy as recently as 2006 buckles under the weight of bank debt, the nation once more is trying to stave off financial ruin.

The government is taking control of Allied Irish Banks Plc and injecting extra cash into the previously nationalized Anglo Irish Bank Corp., raising the cost of the rescue to as much as 50 billion euros ($68 billion), Lenihan said yesterday.

Read moreIrish ‘Groundhog Day’ & Ireland Cancels All Remaining 2010 Bond Auctions Due To Market ‘Turbulence’

Joseph Stiglitz: The Euro May Not Survive

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It is correct that the euro, the dollar and the pound will not survive and that a new world currency will be proposed as the only solution to all problems.

Deficit spending (Keynesianism) is an invention of elite criminals that want to loot and bankrupt the people:

“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. … This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.”
– Alan Greenspan

“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

“Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers.”
– Ron Paul

Joseph Stiglitz, one of the world’s leading economists, has warned that the future of the euro is “looking bleak” and the fragile European economic recovery could be irreparably damaged by a “wave of austerity” sweeping the continent.


Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize winner, warned that speculators are putting pressure on Spain

The former chief economist of the World Bank and a Nobel prize winner also predicted that short-term speculators in the market could soon start putting pressure on Spain, which is struggling with a large deficit and high unemployment. Last week, Moody’s cut the country’s credit rating from AAA to Aa1.

The former adviser to President Bill Clinton also says that the banking sector has gone back to “business as usual” too quickly and that there are still risks of another financial crisis despite some improvements in regulation.

Mr Stiglitz, now a professor at Columbia Business School, makes the arguments in an updated edition of his book, Freefall, on the credit crunch. In the new material, exclusively extracted in today’s Sunday Telegraph, he reveals fears that governments around the world will attempt to cut their deficits too quickly and risk a double dip recession.

Tomorrow, George Osborne will outline the Government’s latest plans for multi-billion pound public sector cuts to tackle the historically-high UK deficit. He has faced criticism that the Coalition is in danger of cutting too hard and too fast but the Chancellor has said that without a credible programme for getting the UK economy into balance, interest rates will rise and growth will be choked off.

“The worry is that there is a wave of austerity building throughout Europe and even hitting America’s shores,” Mr Stiglitz said. “As so many countries cut back on spending prematurely, global aggregate demand will be lowered and growth will slow – even perhaps leading to a double-dip recession.

“America may have caused the global recession but Europe is now responding in kind.”

Mr Stiglitz warned that Spain, similarly to Greece, was now in the speculators’ sights.

Read moreJoseph Stiglitz: The Euro May Not Survive

Wave of strikes cripples Europe as workers vent fury at budget cuts

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Series of co-ordinated protests hits 13 capital cities from Madrid to Brussels


An estimated 100,000 demonstrators from all over Europe marched outside the EU institutions’ headquarters in Brussels

Workers across Europe yesterday vented their anger against government spending cuts and tax hikes that unions said would punish the poor.

Rallies were called in 13 capital cities and millions of Spanish workers went on strike in a mass action that hobbled public transport, paralysed building work and left streets littered with uncollected rubbish.

Some 100,000 workers, including German miners and Polish shipbuilders, brought Brussels to a standstill to protest against savage spending cuts they claimed would make workers the biggest victims of an economic crisis that they are blaming on bankers and traders in the financial markets.

The protest came as the European Commission said it would introduce measures to force EU governments to rein in their finances and reduce deficits, or face financial penalties.

Unions said that 10 million people joined the general strike in Spain. Many small businesses shut their doors in solidarity, flights were grounded, television stations cancelled programmes and strikers scuffled with police. Even the film director Pedro Almodovar suspended production on his latest project. During the morning rush hour, the streets of the Spanish capital were as empty as on a national holiday.

In Greece, hospital doctors stopped work for 24 hours and public transport was disrupted. In Slovenia, about half of public-sector workers remained on strike for the third day against a planned wage freeze. In Ireland, one man blocked the entrance to the Dail, the Irish parliament, with a cement truck in a protest against the country’s enormous bank bailouts. Written across the back of the lorry was: “All politicians should be sacked.”

Several EU governments have been pushed to the brink of financial collapse and have been forced to impose punishing cuts in wages and pensions to trim their debts, which has in turn led to increasing union discontent.

EU unemployment is running at nearly 10 per cent and at about twice that rate in Spain, Latvia and Estonia. In Spain, union leaders called the strike in an effort to persuade the socialist Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, to modify a labour reform package he rushed through the legislature in May to quieten market jitters about Spain’s ballooning deficit.

Read moreWave of strikes cripples Europe as workers vent fury at budget cuts

Greece: Bilderberg PM Papandreou Pledges to Probe Role of Foreign Banksters (Goldman Sachs) in Financial Meltdown

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Oh, sure!

– Bilderberg 2000 with Papandreou

– Bilderberg 2010 with Minister of Finance George Papaconstantinou

So don’t hold your breath!

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Loyd Blankfein (Lord Blankfein)

See also:

– Greece: Beyond $1.2 Trillion Debt, $250,000 Per Working Adult

– Top German Economist: EU Austerity Policies Risk Civil War In Greece

– Greece Puts Its Islands Up For Sale In Order To Survive

Flashback:

– Greek Central Bank Accused of Encouraging Naked Short Selling of Greek Bonds

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:

– State-controlled Hellenic Post Bank (TT) bet against Greece (Kathimerini)

– Fragwürdige Finanzgeschäfte Griechen wetten auf eigene Pleite (Sueddeutsche Zeitung)

The state-controlled Hellenic Post Bank was betting on Greece going bankrupt!

Somebody needs to probe the role of the banksters, the central bank and the government!

Greece plans parliamentary probe of foreign banks

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Greece’s prime minister pledged Thursday that a parliamentary commission would examine the reasons behind Greece’s finance crisis and the role played by US banking giant Goldman Sachs, reports said.

Prime Minister George Papandreou told a press conference reserved for Greek media that the panel would be set up by the end of the year.

“In the context of this parliamentary commission on the economy … we are going to look into the participation of foreign institutions in the Greek problem,” he said in a report carried by the semi-official ANA press agency.

He added that the probe would look back as far as 2001, the year Greece entered the eurozone, and that among its targets would be Goldman Sachs.

Read moreGreece: Bilderberg PM Papandreou Pledges to Probe Role of Foreign Banksters (Goldman Sachs) in Financial Meltdown

Moody’s Cuts Last of Spain’s Triple-A Ratings

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And the people will be footed with the bill created by elite criminals that control all governments and are bankrupting one country after the other.

This is just the beginning for Spain.  Next are  Ireland, Portugal, Italy, the UK and France.

* Cuts Spain ratings to Aa1 vs AAA on weak growth outlook

* Says Spain vow on deficit key to just one notch downgrade

* Does not expect another rating cut any time soon

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MADRID, Sept 30 (Reuters) – Moody’s Investor Service cut Spain’s credit to Aa1 from AAA on Thursday, removing the last of its highly-valued triple-A ratings but saying it did not expect to cut again soon thanks to efforts at fiscal reform.

The one notch downgrade was widely discounted by the markets, following cuts by Standard and Poor’s in April and by Fitch Ratings in May.

Spain is one of the countries being watched most closely by financial markets in Europe’s struggle with billowing debt, but investors have so far given it an easier ride than Ireland and Portugal.

Read moreMoody’s Cuts Last of Spain’s Triple-A Ratings

Medicinal Herbs Will Disappear in EU, Big Pharma Wins

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In the New World Order, planned by elite criminals, the people are about to lose everything.

It’s almost a done deal. We are about to see herbal preparations disappear, and the ability of herbalists to prescribe them will also be lost.

Big Pharma Scores Big Win: Medicinal Herbs Will Disappear in EU

Big Pharma has almost reached the finish line of its decades-long battle to wipe out all competition. As of 1 April 2011-less than eight months from now-virtually all medicinal herbs will become illegal in the European Union. The approach in the United States is a bit different, but it’s having the same devastating effect. The people have become nothing more than sinks for whatever swill Big Pharma and Agribusiness choose to send our way, and we have no option but to pay whatever rates they want.

Big Pharma and Agribusiness have almost completed their march to take over every aspect of health, from the food we eat to the way we care for ourselves when we’re ill. Have no doubt about it: this takeover will steal what health remains to us.

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It Begins Next April Fools Day

In the nastiest April Fool’s Joke of all time, the European Directive on Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products (THMPD) was enacted back on 31 March 2004.(1) It laid down rules and regulations for the use of herbal products that had previously been freely traded.

This directive requires that all herbal preparations must be put through the same kind of procedure as pharmaceuticals. It makes no difference whether a herb has been in common use for thousands of years. The costs for this are far higher than most manufacturers, other than Big Pharma, can bear, with estimates ranging from £80,000 to £120,000 per herb, and with each herb of a compound having to be treated separately.

It matters not that a herb has been used safely and effectively for thousands of years. It will be treated as if it were a drug. Of course, herbs are far from that. They’re preparations made from biological sources. They aren’t necessarily purified, as that can change their nature and efficacy, just as it can in food. It’s a distortion of their nature and the nature of herbalism to treat them like drugs. That, of course, makes no difference in the Big Pharma-ruled edifice of the EU, which has enshrined corporatism in its constitution.

Dr. Robert Verkerk of the Alliance for Natural Health, International (ANH) describes the problem of requiring drug-like compliance on herbal preparations:

Getting a classical herbal medicine from a non-European traditional medicinal culture through the EU registration scheme is akin to putting a square peg into a round hole. The regulatory regime ignores and thus has not been adapted to the specific traditions. Such adaptation is required urgently if the directive is not to discriminate against non-European cultures and consequently violate human rights.(2)

Trade Law

To best understand how this can be happening, one needs to see that trade laws have been at the center of the moves to place all aspects of food and medicine under the control of Big Pharma and Agribusiness.

Read moreMedicinal Herbs Will Disappear in EU, Big Pharma Wins

EU Legislation Puts An End To Herbal Medicine As We Know It

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See also:

– Medicinal Herbs Will Disappear in EU, Big Pharma Wins

EU Legislation Puts Herbal Medicine Under Threat

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Passion flower is a remedy for insomnia and anxiety

Sept. 19 — With strict European legislation due to come into force next April, will some age-old herbal remedies on sale in health food stores today become, quite literally, a thing of the past?

Industry professionals met in Bologna, Italy last week for a conference held at SANA, the international natural products trade fair, to discuss the future of their sector. From April 2011, all member states will have to comply with a European Union directive which specifies that all herbs produced, manufactured and sold in the EU must be classified as either foods or medicines.

Read moreEU Legislation Puts An End To Herbal Medicine As We Know It

Bundesbank President Weber: Financial Crisis Is Not Over

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Weber warns crisis is ongoing as fears mount over Ireland

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Axel Weber
Europe’s financial crisis is not yet over, one of the single currency bloc’s most senior policymakers warned yesterday, as he urged further reform of banking regulation.

Axel Weber, the President of Germany’s Bundesbank and a leading member of the council of the European Central Bank, said he was frustrated more had not been done to tackle the risks posed by very large banks.

“The financial crisis is still with us – we are not in year one after the crisis, we are in year four of the crisis,” Mr Weber said. “Moral hazard is in the financial system. I want to get to a situation where the term ‘too big to fail’ does not exist.”

Mr Weber’s warning was echoed by Ewald Nowotny, one of his colleagues on the ECB council, who called for European governments to begin stepping back from the emergency support, in the form of cheap funding, they have been extending to banks for more than two years.

Read moreBundesbank President Weber: Financial Crisis Is Not Over