Park Life

In our view, the whole structure of modern, developed social welfare democracies is ready to topple. And not just because of the latest financial crisis. The crisis that began in ’07 is just a flashpoint…just part of a huge turnaround that has been underway for years. Guess how much the Italian economy has grown in the last 10 years? Zero. Guess how much net average wages in France have gone up since 1975? Zero. Guess how many net new employees the Japanese have added to the workforce in the last 20 years? Zero. Guess how many new jobs the US economy has created in the last 10 years? Zero. Guess how much the average hourly wage in the US has gone up since 1975? Zero. Guess how much the real, private sector economy of the US has grown in the last decade? Zero. Guess how much US housing – and household wealth – has increased since the beginning of the 21st century? Zero. It seems almost unbelievable, because it contradicts everything we thought we knew. Italy may be mismanaged. Greece may be a basket-case, but the US was supposed to be the most dynamic, adaptable, capitalistic, forward-looking, technology-absorbing, growth-oriented economy the world has ever seen. How could it go nowhere for more than a decade? How could an American’s labor not increase in value, while the economy becomes more efficient and more productive? Read more: Active Volcanoes of Debt http://dailyreckoning.com/active-volcanoes.../#ixzz1S4H3qJPB

Depends if the shop staff are any good at footie non?

Very true. But the survival of man is now bound up in moving away from money, competitive and predatory behaviour. The next rung of the ladder beckons...

Think he plans to fuck up America cause he was teased as a child.

My wi fi keeps dropping out. These fukin Macs are shit.

Finnegans Wake shirley?

Central banks need to start cleaning house. Shit is getting real.

Amen to that brother. How about getting back to nation states with their own currency, their own armies and their own laws? Radical I know. How does that tie in with the alien theories?? I thought we werent advanced enough to think without boundaries and competition? Now we need borders? It's two curves innit.

I'll be in Verona next week so need it to hold on till I've finished with it...

Amen to that brother. How about getting back to nation states with their own currency, their own armies and their own laws? Radical I know.

Did anyone really think that Italy would be able to get through this thing without needing a bailout? Just when you thought that things in Europe could get back to normal for a little while, here comes Italy. On Friday, there was a bit of a "mini-panic" as investors started dumping Italian financial assets. European officials are concerned that the sovereign debt crisis that has ravaged Greece, Ireland and Portugal will now put the Italian economy through the wringer. European Council President Herman Van Rompuy has called an emergency meeting for Monday morning. He is denying that the meeting is about Italy, but everyone knows that Italy is going to be discussed. European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso along with a host of other top officials will also be at this meeting. If it does turn out that Italy needs a bailout, it is going to change the entire game in Europe. What is going on in Italy right now is potentially far more serious than what has been going on in Greece. Italy is the fourth largest economy in the European Union. If Italy requires a bailout, the rest of Europe might not be able to handle it. An anonymous European Central Bank source told one German newspaper the following on Sunday.... "The existing rescue fund in Europe is not sufficient to provide a credible defensive wall for Italy" The source also added that the current bailout fund "was never designed for that". Italy has already implemented austerity measures. This was not supposed to happen. But it is happening. This latest crisis was precipitated by a substantial sell-off of Italian financial assets on Friday. An article posted by Bloomberg described the pounding that the two largest Italian banks took.... UniCredit SpA (UCG) and Intesa Sanpaolo SpA (ISP), Italy’s biggest banks, fell to the lowest in more than two years in Milan yesterday as contagion from Europe’s debt crisis threatened to spread to the region’s third-largest economy. UniCredit plunged 7.9 percent, the biggest decline since March 30, 2009, while Intesa dropped 4.6 percent. Both hit lows not seen since the period when markets were emerging from the crisis spawned by the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Unfortunately, this is just the continuation of a trend that has been going on for a while. When you look at them as a group, the stocks of the five largest Italian banks have lost 27% since the beginning of 2011. That is not a good sign. Also, investors are starting to dump Italian government debt. Reuters says that the yield on 10 year Italian bonds is approaching the danger zone.... The spread of the Italian 10-year government bond yield over benchmark German Bunds hit euro lifetime highs around 2.45 percentage points on Friday, raising the Italian yield to 5.28 percent, close to the 5.5-5.7 percent area which some bankers think could start putting heavy pressure on Italy's finances. The Italian national debt is now up to about 120 percent of GDP. The Italian government would be able to manage it if interest rates were very, very low. But unfortunately they are rising fast and if they get too much higher they are going to become suffocating. As I have written about previously, government debt becomes very painful once you take low interest rates out of the equation. For example, if Greece could borrow all of the money that it wanted to borrow at zero percent interest, it would not have a debt problem. But now the yield on 2 year Greek bonds is over 30 percent, and there is not a government on the face of the earth that can afford to pay interest that high for long.

Yes it's gone.

Alright Tony keep yer hair on!!

Think the quality of the solo career 'output' got the ball rolling on that one.

Nothing will happen to Moloch.

Im sure you just posted a link to column that is so filled with innacuracys that only a mag would be daft enough to believe it Bruce wants the ManU job...These 'buys' are just pledge money.

Nailed it.

6 hours in his kitchen can do that to a man. He lives in that kitchen. Only place he's allowed to use the interwebs...

This is not football manager parky, if it was we'd have signed sanogo, kadlec and babacar by now

Yaya Sonogo.

I think I know you a little bit and I think that's bollocks. You have more than a passing interest in this area.

Special club.

Magnets slow them down apparently.

Wey I don't need to believe in little green men to be well aware of that. You are truly enlightened.