[Ulenspiegel]

The economist Prof. James Hamilton made today an interesting comment on the econbrowser:

"There can be no substitute for sound money. We are living through an episode of the unsoundest money in all history. Nominal GDP is not the thing to target.
...
There is to my knowledge no scientific proof that modest inflation is any better than modest deflation.
...
If you have not figured out by now that excessive debt is the most important problem of the modern economy, you may want to suspend your current beliefs and look into it."

http://econbrowser.com/archives/2014/02 ... e#comments

[dolanbaker]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26185159
The eurozone's economy grew by 0.3% in the final three months of 2013, up from 0.1% growth in the previous quarter.

It was the third quarter of growth since the end of an 18-month recession, the longest period of contraction to affect the single currency area.

The eurozone figures include 17 of the EU's economies. Latvia became the currency zone's 18th member in January.

Across the whole 28-nation EU, including the UK, growth for the October-to-December period was 0.4%.
The figures from Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, also showed that during 2013, GDP contracted by 0.4% in the eurozone, but increased by 0.1% in the EU as a whole.

"The eurozone's recovery has moved up a gear," said Chris Williamson, chief economist of Markit.

In other words the Eurozone contraction has slowed down but growth from other EU countries was enough to "hide the decline!"

It's easy to grow when you're at the bottom of a cycle, if you still can't grow then you're in serious trouble.

[Keith_McClary]

An Interview With Michael Hudson on Economic Violence
by GREG McINERNEY

G: Just before we let you go, Professor Hudson, what’s the future do you think for Europe next five or ten years? Will it collapse or continue on at the expense of its citizens?

Prof. H: It’ll be a slow crash. It’ll be shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. It would only crash if people saw there would be an alternative. If there was (an alternative), the banking system would threaten to shut down and cause a crisis and close ATM machines and stop credit cards. They would cause a crisis to say, “You need us.” That’s what the governments have let happen, for the banking and financial system get a stranglehold on them. There is no question that Europe has to be willing to buck this counter revolution or counter-Enlightenment. You could say that the only way this could be done is by a broad popular movement.

It’s almost like what in America used to be called a Great Awakening, great moral waves of new understandings that you had in the progressive era of the 1890s and then again in the 1930s. It doesn’t seem to have gotten to that point. The Europeans are so dispirited.

There is a basic motto among oppressors: You don’t know when people will begin to fight back until they actually do. So they are just tightening the screws and tightening the screws. Latvia was a cruel experiment to see how far you could reduce living standards. There doesn’t seem to be a limit.

[dolanbaker]

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26541356

Billionaire George Soros has told the BBC that the European Union may not survive its "long-lasting stagnation".

He says that Germany is responsible for many of Europe's problems because it has not taken on a leadership role.

Talking to the Today programme, he said; "My hope is that Germany is going to change and realise that the policy of austerity is counter-productive.

"Their memory is inflation, so they continue fighting inflation when the threat is deflation."

He added: "The only people who can change it are the Germans, because they are in charge. They don't want to be in charge, in fact they are determined not to be in charge. And that's the tragedy."

Mr Soros, an investor and philanthropist, is famous for speculating against the pound in 1992, contributing to its collapse and exit from the EU exchange rate mechanism (ERM), the forerunner of the euro.

Is he being honest, or just playing the game?

[dolanbaker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYhjHk7I0zU
An Irish economists viewpoint on the future troubles in the EU, one word summary Deflation!

[radon1]

Raiffeisen Bank to Cut Back Operations in Russia, Pull Out of Poland

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/ ... 15657.html

VIENNA — Raiffeisen Bank International plans to sell operations in Poland and Slovenia and cut back in Russia in a radical overhaul to help shrink its balance sheet and hit a core capital ratio of 12 percent by the end of 2017, it said.

Burned by hits in Ukraine and Hungary, emerging Europe's number two lender also announced a preliminary 2014 loss of 493 million euros ($558 million)

[radon1]

http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.a ... h-kamnyami

In Poland, unemployed miners pelted police with stones

The out of work miners staged a rally against job cuts in Poland.

Police units arrived to disperse the miners, but the miners attacked the police with stones and Molotov cocktails. The crowd was pacified only by using tear gas and water cannons.

[radon1]

http://www.industriall-union.org/shots- ... -in-poland

Shots fired against striking miners in Poland

Feb 17, 2015

Police in Poland have used firearms against striking miners, injuring more than 20 people. The violent clashes occurred as protestors demanded the immediate resignation of the CEO of Poland’s largest coking coal producer Jastrzebska Spolka Weglowa (JSW).