The insolvent country's worsening liquidity has led to public insurers being unable to pay their bills and prescription drugs running dangerously low, say chemists. On Wednesday, the sector staged a one-day strike to highlight the "emergency situation".

"I give it 15 days. If the European Union doesn't release the loans it has promised by then, there will be scenes of utter chaos here," said Dimitris Karageorgiou, secretary general of the Panhellenic Pharmaceutical Association.

Via: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/23/greece-debt-creating-healthcare-crisis

Especially bad is that most remaining power generation is very old and had been build in 1960-1970.

An, btw, Fitch downgraded Japan rating today.

Via: http://news.investors.com/article/611887/201205171857/most-unemployed-are-college-grads-dropouts.htm

Via: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-11/facebook-co-founder-saverin-gives-up-u-s-citizenship-before-ipo.html

Funny, isn't it?

Of those losing unemployment insurance coverage 40 percent will be here in California.

Budget

April is a big month for tax receipts and revenues came in $2.44 billion below expectations.

So, $9 billion budget deficit is no longer $9 billion but $16 billion (projected).

Via: http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/brave-new-economy-california-budget-implications-real-estate-california-budget-economy/#more-5591

The data showed nearly 1.1 million people were jobless, 42 percent more than in the same month a year ago, reflecting the damage as the country's 215 billion euro economy continues to contract for a fifth consecutive year.

Via: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/10/us-greece-unemployment-idUSBRE8490IO20120510

When asked what’s really happening with the US economy, Yamarone responded, “I think people are just running out of money. We have contracting, real disposable incomes. Most of the job creation that we have is from minimum wage type jobs.”

“I’m fortunate enough to travel and speak to chambers of commerce with 300 to 500 people in the audience. They all tell me, ‘Hey, listen, I am letting go of workers. I’m hiring them back at a fraction of what I used to pay them.’

You hear from the other side, ‘Hey, I finally got a job after two years of being unemployed. I used to make $100,000 (each year), now I’m making $45,000 or now I’m working part time.’

“So you are actually seeing this collapse, contracting on a real basis, of real disposable personal incomes. If you don’t have the money, you can’t facilitate expenditures. So that’s the core of the problem. That’s what’s really going on in the US economy.

You don’t listen to what all of these bigger numbers coming across the screen tell you. You talk to the people who are running the country. 99.7% of all employer firms in this country are small businesses. So when they speak, you have to listen.

You have to listen to what the small businesses are telling you and right now they are telling you, ‘Hey, I’m the head of a 3rd or 4th generation, 75 or 100 year old business, and I’ve got to shut the doors’ or ‘I’ve got to let people go. And if I’m hiring anybody back, it’s only on a temporary basis.’

Sometimes they do this through a hiring firm so that they can sidestep paying unemployment benefit insurance. So that’s what’s really going on at the grassroots level of the economy. Very, very, grossly different from what you’re seeing in some of these numbers coming out in earnings releases.”

Yamarone also added: “Monetary policy is very different from the days when we were an industrial behemoth. If you look at the first eight recessions after World War II, when we were a big manufacturer, back then, if the Fed saw a problem they cut rates and boom, manufacturers sparked up their idled plants and factories.

In fact, the first eight recessions after World War II, it took, on average, twenty months for us to respond and get all of the jobs that we lost during the recession back. So, in a little less than two years the Fed policy response would get all of the jobs back.

However, you look at the last two recessions, in ’90/’91 and the 2001 recession, they were jobless recoveries. We don’t respond to monetary policy the same way because we are no longer that manufacturing behemoth. So the Fed cuts rates at the first sign of trouble and it takes, during those recessions, forty months for us to get back all of the jobs we would lose.

In this current recession, we are not even close (to getting the jobs back) and that’s 50 months and counting.”

Via: http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2012/4/26_Yamarone_-_We_Are_Literally_Witnessing_a_Collapse.html

Sony, which reported a record $5.7 billion annual loss Thursday, dived 6.43 percent to 1,135 yen, while Panasonic closed down 1.55 percent at 570 yen shortly before posting a record $9.67 billion annual loss on Friday.

The firms' shares stood at their lowest level since at least 1980, taking into account previous stock splits, according to the online edition of the Nikkei business daily.

Via: http://news.yahoo.com/sony-panasonic-shares-plunge-30-lows-043559428.html

And in this reality, goverments who now cut various teachers, policemens, pensions, will make the next step.
They'll cut dotations to agro business, to energy infrastructure (most green energy donations will end this year, btw).
I know, it is hard to imagine, but numbers tell us that they have no other solution. And this next step will put ordinary people between two things - from one side it'll be dropping income, from other side it'll be fast prices rise on the things you can not live without. And both will be accompanied by huge company in mass media telling you how it could be much worse, but they worked hard and saved the day.

Soon chart will become similar for other EU countries.
Indicating that many of the young people are not required by economic now.

Read the rest at: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/95-percent-of-the-jobs-lost-during-the-recession-were-middle-class-jobs

Via: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/and-so-world-burns-global-april-pmi-summary

Via: http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2012/04/25/survey-9-in-10-greeks-unable-to-purchase-drugs-medicindue-to-economic-problems/

The National Shooting Sports Foundation says the economic impact of firearm sales — a figure that includes jobs. taxes and sales — hit $31 billion in 2011, up from $19 billion in 2008.

Jobs in the firearms business jumped 30 percent from 2008 to 2011, when the industry employed 98,750.

The industry paid $2.5 billion in federal taxes in 2011, up 66 percent in three years.

FBI reported that a record 14.4 million criminal background checks were requested for gun purchases in 2010, and that preliminary numbers project the figure to be above 16 million for 2011.

Via: http://www.financialarmageddon.com/2012/04/business-is-booming.html

By June some 700,000 people who are currently collecting benefits will lose everything.

Via: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/your-ebt-card-has-been-denied-700000-are-about-lose-their-extended-jobless-claims-benefits

Via: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/yet-another-exponential-chart-and-different-spin-keynesianism

Via: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-on-the-spanish-economy-2012-4#the-spanish-pmi-predicts-sharply-negative-gdp-1

Compared to 2008 income dropped from 178 bln to 171 bln (including real inflation drop will look much bigger) , expenses were 227 and dificit only 48 bln (or 26% of income).

May be it'll be all easy to cut and go back to something remotely sane, like..... Greece?

Nope, around 173 bln are spend to support poor and old in various areas (food, medicine, etc) plus 63 bln is for defence. Not much left really (and most of it is alrso money spent on quite real things).

Via: http://fms.treas.gov/mts/mts0312.pdf

Via: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-13/italian-industrial-output-falls-for-second-month-on-slump.html

My name is Jurre Hermans. I am 10 years old and live in the Netherlands. I am quite worried about the eurocrisis and look at the TV news daily. The eurocrisis is a big problem. I think about solutions. Since I read in the newspaper about your price, I thought that I would like to submit my idea. The idea might fit. So here it is: I made a picture of my solution and I will explain it to you.

Greece should leave the Euro. How do you do that? All Greek people should bring their Euro to the bank. They put it in an exchange machine (see left on my picture). You see, the Greek guy does not look happy!! The Greek man gets back Greek Drachme from the bank, their old currency.

The Bank gives all these euro’s to the Greek Government (see top left on my picture). All these euros together form a pancake or a pizza (see on top in the picture). Now the Greek government can start to pay back all their debts, everyone who has a debt gets a slice of the pizza. You see that all these euro’s in the pizza’s go the companies and banks who have given loans in Greece (see right in my picture).

Now here comes the clever part of my idea:

The Greek people do not want to exchange their Euro’s for Drachmes because they know that this Drachme will lose its value dramatically. They try to keep or hide their Euro’s. They know that if theywait a while they will get more Drachmes.

So if a Greek man tries to keep his Euros (or bring his euros to a bank in an other country like Holland or Germany) and it is discovered, he gets a penalty just as high or double as the whole amount in euros he tried to hide!!!

In this way I ensure that all Greeks bring their euros to a greek bank and so the greek government can pay back all the debts.

I hope my idea helps you!!!!

Of course if a country has paid back all his debts , he can return to the eurozone.

A bit more about myself: I am 10, love animals since I have a dog and a bird. I live in a family of 5 in Holland. I have 5 friends with whom I play all day, mostly outside.

Look! He even loves animals! Sadly love towards people are not in his arsenal.

Via: http://greece.greekreporter.com/2012/04/03/11-year-old-jurre-hermans-proposes-pizza-like-greek-euro-exit-plan/

Thing that this video get wrong is that goverment is partly right in their measures.
Why? Because you need to take into account globalization.
So, if you introduce taxes, get this money and spend it on war and construction you can be in surplus.
As you have problems controlling money spend by citizens (on Chinese and other countries goods).
But you can be good at controlling contracts to be sure that they stay inside.

This is ideal situation, of course.

Odds are that you’ve been doing this for months, if not years, probably at the expense of your family life, your exercise routine, your diet, your stress levels, and your sanity. You’re burned out, tired, achy, and utterly forgotten by your spouse, kids and dog. But you push on anyway, because everybody knows that working crazy hours is what it takes to prove that you’re “passionate” and “productive” and “a team player” — the kind of person who might just have a chance to survive the next round of layoffs. This is what work looks like now. It’s been this way for so long that most American workers don’t realize that for most of the 20th century, the broad consensus among American business leaders was that working people more than 40 hours a week was stupid, wasteful, dangerous, and expensive — and the most telling sign of dangerously incompetent management to boot. It’s a heresy now (good luck convincing your boss of what I’m about to say), but every hour you work over 40 hours a week is making you less effective and productive over both the short and the long haul.

Read the rest at http://www.alternet.org/visions/154518/why_we_have_to_go_back_to_a_40-hour_work_week_to_keep_our_sanity?page=entire

It is also interesting that 1997 crisis, first amongs the modern wave) had one clear main target - Korean chaebals (among other Asian emerging markets).
And in reality many of them suffered like Daewoo(more) and Hyundai(less). But most survived, and I hope, will keep specifics uncommon to Western democratic(tm) business approaches.

In liberal papers (and many Korean also) it is common place to paint them with dirt.
Talk about absence of big profits, corruption.
Taking in consideration that now is the time of large corporations wars, sometimes very complex ones, ones that are tricky to understand, it is mostly proparanda weapons.
Yet, it is very interesting to look at them in more details.
Especially considering that in upcoming years they'll clear the path from virtual PR greations such as Apple, and will take their market share. In the future posts I'l try to talk about conglomerates in more details.

Most of the cuts at Salo, which were in line with the plan announced Feb. 8, will take place by the end of June, Nokia said in a statement. The company also plans to cut 2,300 factory- worker jobs in Komarom, Hungary and 700 in Reynosa, Mexico as it performs similar conversions to those plants.

The firings add to more than 10,000 job reductions Chief Executive Officer Stephen Elop has announced since Nokia linked up with Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) a year ago to fight a loss of smartphone market share to Apple Inc. (AAPL) Nokia is shrinking the number of main handset assembly plants to five from nine at the beginning of 2011, and building a new factory in Vietnam for low-end phones. It made the first Lumia handsets at a Compal Communications Inc. factory in Taiwan.

Via: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-22/nokia-agrees-with-unions-on-1-000-job-cuts-at-finnish-plant-1-.html

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/03/16/148680705/why-are-some-countries-rich-and-others-poor <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Why are some nations rich and others poor? In a new book called Why Nations Fail, a pair of economists argue that a lot comes down to politics.

To research the book, the authors scoured the world for populations and geographic areas that are identical in all respects save one: they're on different sides of a border.

The two Koreas are an extreme example. But you can see the same thing on the border of the US and Mexico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and dozens of other neighboring countries. In all of these cases, the people and land were fairly similar, but the border changed everything.

"It's all about institutions," Daron Acemoglu, one of the authors, explained. "It's really about human-made systems, rules, regulations, formal or informal that create different incentives."

When these guys talk about institutions they mean it as broadly as possible: it's the formal rules and laws, but also the norms and common practices of a society. Lots of countries have great constitutions but their leaders have a practice of ignoring the rules whenever they feel like it.

Acemoglu and his co-author, James Robinson say the key difference between rich countries and poor ones is the degree to which a country has institutions that keep a small elite from grabbing all the wealth. In poor countries, the rich and powerful crush the poor and powerless.

Think of a poor farmer in Haiti or the Congo today or medieval Europe 500 years ago. Sure, he could, maybe, irrigate his land and till the soil and grow more stuff. But they know that the institutions in place guarantee that a well connected member of the elite will show up and claim the spoils. So what's the point? The poor have no incentive to invest in land or businesses or to accumulate savings. The result - undeveloped land and a poor nation.

James said, "Ultimately, what needs to change is that those countries have to make a transition to having inclusive institutions. And that's not something that throwing money at them can achieve."

This can seem discouraging but their message does offer hope, too. Poverty is not the simple result of bad geography, bad culture, bad history. It's the result of us: of the ways that people choose to organize their societies. And, that means, we can change things.

That is a 22.55% plunge in spite of the fact that this February was a leap year adding a day to the calendar

It must be clear indicator of growth, you can bet on it. As we'll see more such indicators soon.

Via: http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/03/california-tax-revenues-plunge.html

• raw taxes income - 120 billions, 40 billions of them went to tax returns, so, real taxes income - 80 bln (about 5 bln / day)

• paid debt 2963 bln, new debt issued - 3039 bln. So, you need to issue 200 bln a day to be above water, this is 39 times more than taxes

• debt increased by 76 billions (around 5 bln a day)

• expanses accounted to 220 billions (about 15 bln a day)

Via: https://www.fms.treas.gov/fmsweb/viewDTSFiles?dir=w&fname=12031500.pdf

For me it looks like now it is best to declare Italy or Spain bankrupts, isn't it?
Or bomb Sirya or Iran because their people live improperly, using unlicensed copy of democracy (tm) ?

Symptoms: Procrastination, indecision, anxiety, shortness of breath, pacing, racing heart, nail-biting, hair-twisting

Treatment: FOMO treatments vary by patient, ranging from De-Teching to logging onto Facebook.

Side effects: More FOMO

Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) is the uneasy and sometimes all-consuming feeling that you’re missing out—that your peers are doing, in the know about or in possession of more or something better than you. FOMO may be a social angst that’s always existed, but it’s going into overdrive thanks to real-time digital updates and to our constant companion, the smartphone. Once social media makes people aware of things to which they otherwise might never have been privy, it can spark a sense of vicarious participation or motivate real-world behavior. Conversely, it can be a curse, fostering anxiety and feelings of inadequacy.

FOMO is the sometimes energizing, sometimes terrifying anxiety that you are missing out on something absolutely terrific. It could be a TV show, it could be a party, it could be a gadget, it could be that really good burrito from the food cart. The important thing to keep in mind with FOMO is that it’s not just a state of mind; it is also a physical reaction. So as a FOMO sufferer, I can report sweating, itching, pacing and compulsive refreshing of my Twitter feed.

The acronym is infiltrating vocabularies as more than just an am using expression. FOMO encapsulates an increasingly pronounced phenomenon in the age of social media—an ageless concept that’s reached a tipping point. With 845 million-plus active users on Facebook, not to mention Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and other social platforms, today’s unprecedented awareness of how others are living their lives is predisposing more and more people to FOMO. While the fear of missing out has always been essential for mar keters to understand, it’s grown more significant for brands, since today’s intensified FOMO drives behaviors on social media sites and, s ubsequently, real-world consumer actions and self-perceptions.

Read very interesting report:

http://www.jwtintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/F_JWT_FOMO-update_3.6.12.pdf

Interesting chart depicting S&P and treasures.

Another proof that US is now controlling markets, with main target being treasures.