Yesterday it was Japan which printed a record current account deficit. Today, we learn that in February the US will report its largest budget deficit in history, as the Keynesian floodgates open full bore, and tax revenues just refuse to come in at anything close to the pace of accelerated spending, forcing the US to borrow 54 cents for every dollar it spends

Via: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/us-budget-deficit-hits-all-time-high-february

“The choice is between surrendering the sovereignty of Iceland in monetary policy by unilaterally adopting the currency of another country or become a member of the EU"

In fact, as usual, politicians are pushing bankers elites opinions, without providing any real choice.
Key words here are : "surrendering the sovereignty in monetary policy".
Already very few countries in the world stil have "sovereignty in monetary policy".
But in the globalization project you must eliminate this in all countries.

Via: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-10/iceland-will-adopt-euro-or-other-currency-prime-minister-says.html

Home prices dropped 0.5 percent from January to an average 160,118 pounds ($252,600), Lloyds Banking Group Plc (LLOY)’s Halifax mortgage-lending unit said in a statement in London today. A separate report from the British Retail Consortium showed sales at stores open at least 12 months decreased 0.3 percent last month from a year earlier.

Via: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-06/u-k-february-house-prices-fall-0-5-on-month-halifax-says.html

Via: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/ltro-2-bring-down-%E2%82%AC5295-billion-gross-%E2%82%AC311-billion-net-discount-window-stigma-resurfacing

Old news, but interesting
Via: http://www.cnbc.com/id/44701381/The_Fed_Wants_to_Be_Your_Facebook_Friend

The dard side clouds everything. Impossible to see the future is.

Worse still, value-added tax receipts posted an 18.7 percent decrease last month from January 2011 as the economy continues to tread the path of recession: VAT receipts only amounted to 1.85 billion euros in January compared to 2.29 billion in the same month last year.

Via: http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite2_25206_07/02/2012_426623

Via: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/4-14022012-AP/EN/4-14022012-AP-EN.PDF

The companies will spin off and merge the units to create Japan Display K.K. next year, the three Tokyo-based electronics makers said today. The government-backed Innovation Network Corp. of Japan will own 70 percent of the venture after a 200 billion yen ($2.6 billion) investment, while Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi will split the remaining 30 percent, they said.

Old news, but really fun.

Via: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-31/sony-toshiba-hitachi-to-merge-lcd-businesses-form-state-backed-venture.html

Announced workforce reductions surged to 94,369 through Feb. 10 from 26,561 a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Employers based in Western Europe accounted for the biggest group of job-cut disclosures, threatening to add to unemployment in the euro area already running at a 13-year high.

Such firings are now running at the quickest pace to start a year since a 2009 peak, when the European and U.S. economies shrank amid the deepest slump since World War II. Now, Europe’s debt crises may help spur a 0.5 percent contraction in the euro- area economy in 2012, based on economists’ estimates.

Via: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-13/europe-job-losses-accelerating-with-astrazeneca-to-pepsico-cuts.html

The chief endeavour of the ruling finance clans in all countries is to kill in the working people faith in their own strength, faith in the possibility and inevitability of their victory, and thus to perpetuate slavery. Clans know that if financial capitalism has not yet been overthrown and still continues to exist, it owes it not to its own merits, but to the fact that the people have still not enough faith in the possibility of their victory.

J. V. Stalin, 1939
Report on the Work of the Central Committee to the Eighteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.)
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1939/03/10.htm

See also
http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/1617/on-the-crisis/p1

Among all the online news organizations trying to find a way to profitability, consider AllNovaScotia.com, which has just celebrated 10 years online and now challenges its historic print rival for the attention of the province’s leaders.

It’s done that by not following the rules: It has a nearly impenetrable paywall, no social media presence, no multimedia, and only rare use of links. It doesn’t cover crime and barely covers sports and entertainment.

However, it delivers up-to-the minute coverage of business, city hall, and the provincial legislature via the web and apps for iOS and BlackBerry. It scoops its news rivals almost daily and has won loyal readers through dogged combing of public records and often by prying into the personal lives of the province’s movers and shakers.

The site is based in Halifax, the capital city of Nova Scotia, a province of just under a million people in Atlantic Canada. Ask 10 people on the street about AllNovaScotia and it’s likely eight will say they’ve never heard of it.

“I think it might be nine people,” says Parker Donham, a former journalist for the now-defunct Halifax Daily News, communications consultant, and blogger. “But the one who did would be an assistant deputy minister or a regional manager. Between people paying for it and a limited amount of advertising, they’ve got a business model that seems to work.”

“On the whole, I think they are the paper of record now,” adds Donham. “I don’t think there are many serious business or political people who don’t see that every morning.”

Read the rest at http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/01/how-a-tightly-paywalled-social-media-ignoring-anti-copy-paste-gossipy-news-site-became-a-dominant-force-in-nova-scotia/

Somehow it happened what exactly same contries showed middle finger to the US/EU representatives who insisted on more sanctions.

So, for now, true democratic bombing of Iran scientists is the main vector of fighters for good bankers future.

Via: http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/02/huge-plunge-in-petroleum-and-gasoline.html

Glencore chartered the vessel, operated by Global Maritime Investments Ltd., a Cyprus-based company with offices in London, Steve Rodley, GMI’s U.K. managing director, said by phone today. The daily payments last the first 60 days of the charter, Rodley said. The vessel will haul a cargo of grains to Europe, putting the carrier in a better position for its next shipment, he said.

“Our other option was to stay in the Pacific and earn poor revenues or ballast to the Atlantic and pay the fuel ourselves,” Rodley said. Ballasting refers to sailing without a cargo. Charles Watenphul, a spokesman for Glencore, declined to comment in an e-mailed response to questions.

The Baltic Dry Index, a measure of commodity shipping costs, advanced 1 point to 648 points today, rising from the lowest since August 1986 on Feb. 3. Owners and operators of vessels are paying as much as $50,000 a day in fuel to travel to ports to win work, or agreeing rates at zero cost as rates fall to records.

Via: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-06/glencore-hires-grain-carrier-at-minus-2-000-a-day-global-marine-says.html

The wide variation in rates of unemployment between prosperous and dead zones is displayed below (click on the image to enlarge):

The map below presents a visual representation of dead and prosperous zonesIt shows, for example, that dead zones have existed in the South dating as far back as two decades. Furthermore, the last five years of data show almost no development of prosperous areas. The unevenness of the current national recovery is starker in dead zones, where unemployment rates have been high for longer periods of time.

Read the rest at: http://www.alternet.org/economy/153875/america’s_dead_zones%3A_from_detroit_to_dyersburg%2C_why_does_prosperity_pass_so_many_places_by/?page=entire

The new administrator, appointed by other eurozone finance ministers, would take responsibility for overseeing “all major blocks of expenditure” by the Greek government.

“Budget consolidation has to be put under a strict steering and control system,” the proposal reads. “Given the disappointing compliance so far, Greece has to accept shifting budgetary sovereignty to the European level for a certain period of time.”

Right now things are going as planned. Debt will be used as tool to take local goverments under full control (not 70-80% control as today). And, as usualy, evil things will be made under name of god and doing "good things for society".

Proposal: http://media.ft.com/cms/853efee4-4918-11e1-88f0-00144feabdc0.pdf

Via: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/33ab91f0-4913-11e1-88f0-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1kqtgFrNB

Green is amount of debt you need to pay this year.

Red is the planned new debt :-)

Ignoring President Obama's latest slogan, "in-sourcing manufacturing jobs," his corporate economic advisors are still outsourcing them. The portion of R&D by U.S. multis which is conducted overseas, rose from 16% in 2000 to estimated 29% now. The report quotes 3M, one of the United States' biggest R&D spenders, that it is expanding overseas "in preparation for a world where the West is no longer the dominant manufacturing power."

The "S&E Indicators" is actually a series of long studies of manufacturing, research, labor force, etc., in what is loosely defined as "high technology" engineering and manufacturing. These are some salient high- (or, low-)lights of the reports:

• Since 2000, U.S. high-technology employment has dropped 28%, with the loss of 687,000 productive and essential jobs, down to just 1.8 million currently. Such employment earns more than twice the national median income for all workers.

• American multinational firms have been reducing R&D spending in the United States by 3-4%/year.

• From 1999-2004, U.S. firms established R&D jobs abroad at a relatively slow annual rate of 3%, increasing the share of their R&D employment overseas from 14 to 16%. But from 2004-2009, the number of new R&D jobs overseas took off, growing to 27 percent of all R&D jobs at these U.S. firms. Since 2004, about 85 percent of R&D employment growth in U.S. multinational corporations has been abroad.

• The U.S. share of worldwide high-tech exports has dropped from 22% in 1999 to 15% in 2010.

• Asia's R&D annual spending, which was half the U.S. level in 2000, is now equal to it, $400 billion/year.

• Only 4% of the world's engineering degrees are earned in the United States (half of those, by immigrants) — this is actually slightly less than the American share in the world's population!

As if to illustrate the collapse, the Jan. 19 New York Times ran a major article on Boeing's shock to Wichita, Kansas. The company is closing in Wichita and eliminating 2,200 jobs, just one year after winning the huge Air Force tanker contract and promising to bring in 6-7,000 new ones, at a big ceremony with Sen. Pat Roberts and House Representatives. Prior to these cuts, Wichita aerospace employment — at an average annual income of about $70,000 — had already fallen 33%, from 42,000 to 28,000. "The city is at risk of losing its identity as one of those American places where people make things and are paid well for it," observed the Times — this is actually true for the whole country while Obama preaches about "defense export initiatives" and "in-sourcing".

Now it is healphcare reform.

And, of course real goverment must sell all that makes big profits. This is, for sure, smart move.

Romania received offers from three groups seeking to manage the sale of a 15 percent stake in natural-gas producer Romgaz SA through the Bucharest Stock Exchange, according to an Economy Ministry official.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is a part of one group, while two rival groups include JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc., said Florin Vladan, the ministry’s official in charge of the sale, in a phone interview from Bucharest today.

Romania is pushing ahead with plans to sell stakes in state-owned companies this year

And as usual we see our old friends in contenders.

Backed by the criminals in the goverments.

“Years ago, you’d see a man in a pub selling CDs,” says Eric Phelps, a detective in London’s Metropolitan Police. “Not any more.” Indeed, thefts of entertainment products like CDs and DVDs have collapsed in England and Wales, to the point that they are now taken in just 7% of all burglaries in which something is stolen (see chart). They are now targeted no more frequently than are toiletries and cigarettes. They are now targeted no more frequently than are toiletries and cigarettes.

Computers, on the other hand, are both valuable and increasingly portable: they are now taken more commonly than anything except purses and wallets. Mr Phelps says that gold jewellery has also become more popular as the value of that metal has soared.

“These sorts of crimes are regarded even by criminals as the preserve of the desperate,” says James Treadwell, a Leicester University criminologist. Burglars are generally drug-addled, unskilled and opportunistic. Yet they are capable of making economic calculations.

Via: http://www.economist.com/node/21542438

Via: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/foreigners-sell-record-85-billion-treasurys-6-consecutive-weeks-time-get-concerned

Smart men started to talk about "last bubble" in US treasures. As their price rise have no meaningful foundation. IF you look back at this blog entries, you'll find that it is not only bubble by itself, it, upon bursting, will trigger chain reaction.