Society's Child
Closer fiscal union and the emergence of a two-speed Europe threaten a vicious deflationary debt spiral from which the eurozone will struggle to escape
The dire economic situation in which most of the rich world found itself in 2011 was not merely the result of impersonal economic forces, but was largely created by the policies pursued, or not pursued, by world leaders.
Indeed, the remarkable unanimity that prevailed in the first phase of the financial crisis that began in 2008, and which culminated in the $1 trillion (£645bn) rescue package put together for the London G20 meeting in April 2009, dissipated long ago. Now, bureaucratic infighting and misconceptions are rampant.
Worse still, policy disagreements are playing out more or less along national lines. The centre of fiscal conservatism is Germany, while Anglo-Saxon countries are still drawn to John Maynard Keynes. This division is complicating matters enormously, because close international co-operation is needed to correct the global imbalances that remain at the root of the crisis.
© Geert Vanden Wijngaert/Associated Press
Policy disagreements are playing out more or less along national lines.
Policy disagreements are playing out more or less along national lines.
The dire economic situation in which most of the rich world found itself in 2011 was not merely the result of impersonal economic forces, but was largely created by the policies pursued, or not pursued, by world leaders.
Indeed, the remarkable unanimity that prevailed in the first phase of the financial crisis that began in 2008, and which culminated in the $1 trillion (£645bn) rescue package put together for the London G20 meeting in April 2009, dissipated long ago. Now, bureaucratic infighting and misconceptions are rampant.
Worse still, policy disagreements are playing out more or less along national lines. The centre of fiscal conservatism is Germany, while Anglo-Saxon countries are still drawn to John Maynard Keynes. This division is complicating matters enormously, because close international co-operation is needed to correct the global imbalances that remain at the root of the crisis.
On the 20 February 2012 the deputy Sheriff arrived at another Irish family's home to repossess it and give the keys to the bank in Co Laois. Thus putting another Irish family onto the streets.
People from DefendOurHomesLeague.ie, ItsNotOurDebt.com, FreedomFromAllDebt.com, UnitedLeftAlliance.org, AntiEvictionTaskForce.com and everyone else that was there.
Ben Gilroy from "Freedom From All Debt.com" questions the sheriff outside the gates to the house and does an interview at the end of the video.
People from DefendOurHomesLeague.ie, ItsNotOurDebt.com, FreedomFromAllDebt.com, UnitedLeftAlliance.org, AntiEvictionTaskForce.com and everyone else that was there.
Ben Gilroy from "Freedom From All Debt.com" questions the sheriff outside the gates to the house and does an interview at the end of the video.
© Juan Mabromata/AFP/Getty Images
Police and rescue workers surround a train that crashed at Once train station in Buenos Aires Wednesday.
Police and rescue workers surround a train that crashed at Once train station in Buenos Aires Wednesday.
More than 600 people are injured, officials say, with reports of some passengers still trapped in carnage at Buenos Aires station
Buenos Aires - A packed train slammed into the end of the line in Buenos Aires' busy Once station, killing 49 people and injuring hundreds of morning commuters in Argentina's worst train accident in decades.
Federal Police Commissioner Nestor Rodriguez said Wednesday's dead included 48 adults and one child.
Officials said more than 600 people were injured out of more than 800 people who were reportedly on the train.
The death toll was Argentina's highest from a train accident since 1970, when 200 were killed.
Officials said the train was unable to stop and it slammed into the buffers inside the centrally located station.
"The train entered the Once station at 26 kilometers per hour (16 mph)... we suppose there was some flaw in the brakes," Transport Secretary Juan Pablo Schiavi told state news agency Telam.
"The train was full and the impact was tremendous," a passenger named Ezequiel told local television, AFP reported.
© Unknown
Arturo de los Santos takes part in a demonstration in front of Freddie Mac's Los Angeles offices on Feb. 2, demanding the mortgage company halt efforts to forcibly remove him and his family from their single-story house in Riverside, Calif.
Arturo de los Santos takes part in a demonstration in front of Freddie Mac's Los Angeles offices on Feb. 2, demanding the mortgage company halt efforts to forcibly remove him and his family from their single-story house in Riverside, Calif.
"I'm just a regular guy who gets up each day, takes the kids to school and goes to work," said de los Santos, a retired Marine who is hunkered down in the modest three-bedroom house in Riverside, Calif., surrounded by an encampment of Occupy Riverside protesters and housing activists. "We've done everything the way we were supposed to. We're not going to just sit back and let Freddie Mac steal our home."
A new eviction order aimed at forcing de los Santos, a 46-year-old metal worker, and his family out of the house took effect Tuesday, meaning that sheriff's deputies could arrive at any time. Arturo de los Santos also has been served a court summons threaten[ing] him with arrest if he doesn't leave his house.
De los Santos' story is similar to thousands of other American homeowners who claim that banks mishandled mortgage modifications.
When the economic crisis hit in 2008, the factory where he worked cut his hours, so de los Santos pursued a modification based on his lower income with JP Morgan Chase, servicer of the loan.
© n/a
Half of children aged between 10 and 12 do not know what a noun is or cannot identify an adverb - while almost a third, 31 per cent, cannot use apostrophes correctly.
More than one in five - 22 per cent - could not use the correct version of 'they're', 'there' and 'their' in a sentence and more than four in 10 couldn't spell the word 'secretaries' correctly.
Maths didn't fare much better in the survey by online tutor, mytutor, with more than a quarter of children being unable to add two small sums of money without using a calculator as they can't do division and basic algebra.
Twenty-seven per cent of children surveyed could not add £2.36 and £1.49 to get £3.85. In addition, more than a third, 36 per cent, could not divide 415 by five and a quarter did not know the answer to seven multiplied by six.
The Associated Press has revealed the New York City Police Department monitored Muslim college students at schools throughout the Northeast, including Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania. In one case, the NYPD sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip in upstate New York, where he recorded students' names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed. We speak to one of the students on the trip, Jawad Rasul. He is the only student who was under surveillance to now publicly speak out about his experience. "[This is] hurting NYPD's try and attempt at finding homegrown terrorism, because these kind of tactics actually create more hatred towards them and the other law-enforcement agencies and really destroys the trust that any youth might have developed with the government," Rasul said. We're also joined by Mongi Dhaouadi, executive director of the Connecticut chapter of Council on American-Islamic Relations, which is calling for a state probe into the spying on Muslims.
© Foster's Daily Democrat
"I didn't think I could handle this guy physically, so I fired into the ground," Fleming told FoxNews.com.
"I didn't think I could handle this guy physically, so I fired into the ground," Fleming told FoxNews.com.
A New Hampshire man who fired his handgun into the ground to scare an alleged burglar he caught crawling out of a neighbor's window is now facing a felony charge -- and the same potential prison sentence as the man he stopped.
Dennis Fleming, 61, of Farmington, was arrested for reckless conduct after the Saturday incident at his 19th century farmhouse. The single grandfather had returned home to find that his home had been burglarized and spotted Joseph Hebert, 27, climbing out of a window at a neighbor's home. Fleming said he yelled "Freeze!" before firing his gun into the ground, then held Hebert at gunpoint until police arrived.
"I didn't think I could handle this guy physically, so I fired into the ground," Fleming told FoxNews.com. "He stopped. He knew I was serious. I was angry ... and I was worried that this guy was going to come after me."
No one was injured in the incident, but when the police arrived, they made two arrests. Hebert was charged with two counts of burglary and drug possession. He faces up to seven years in prison if convicted. Fleming, meanwhile, is scheduled to be arraigned March 20 on a charge of reckless conduct, which could potentially land him a sentence similar to the one Hebert faces.
© Minyanville
Spoils of Olé
Spoils of Olé
It's like something out of a fairy tale. A tiny town in a country with nearly 23% unemployment receives a huge, sudden windfall and every resident becomes a near millionaire overnight.
Of course, if fairy tales have taught us anything, it's that stories like this rarely end well.
Sodeto, a village of 250 people in an inhospitable region of northern Spain has won the lottery -- or part of it anyway. According to Der Spiegel, the town won 17% of the country's annual Christmas lottery's biggest prize, "El Gordo," totaling 700 million euros ($910 million). The village itself took 120 million euros ($158 million).
The rest of the prize money was paid out in other towns in Sodeto's province of Huesca but Sodeto was the only village where every family won. Its luck can be primarily traced back to the local housewives' club, which spent weeks convincing residents to buy lotto tickets.
Since their win, many around Spain have viewed the village as a potential cash cow. Salesmen sit in the local bar all day, hoping to sell new cars, homes or investments.
On their end, many residents claim that they want to use the money to improve the town and draw people back to it -- it's been shrinking for years. Some see the money as a way to improve the area's agricultural infrastructure.
© Press TV
Massive rallies were held today in Pakistan in response to over 2,000 soldiers being killed by NATO forces and constant drone strikes that leave innocent woman and children dead. The protests also denounced the U.S. assassination attacks by U.S. military forces on Pakistani soil.
The sparking point for the rallies began when a U.S airstrike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November. Since the U.S. has repeatedly ignored requests to end or coordinate them with Pakistani intelligence in order to prevent so-called collateral damage.
While it may be hard to imagine the anger of Pakistani citizens given all of the one-sided reporting and anti-terrorism propaganda reported in the corporate media, anyone who objectively questions the morality situation can clearly understand there anger. As reported some time ago, 1 in 7 U.S. drone strikes worldwide kills a child. In Pakistan those statistics are worse, were in 1 in 3 drone strikes kills a child. See this- Report: "1 in 3 Pakistan Drone Strikes and 1in 7 of all CIA Drone Strikes Kills a Child."
Furthermore, just imagine Russia or Iranian special forces conducting raids every day to assassinate people here inside the U.S. Also imagine, when every a target is assassinated any innocent bystander, be they a man, women or child, who is unfortunate to be in the surrounding area is also killed as part of collateral damage.
Comment: Is there any possible connection?: Israeli agents operate in Argentina (Sun, 09 Oct 2011) See link for Video.