Archive
Timeline: Greece’s debt crisis
Here is a timeline of economic events in Greece since 2010:
Jan 2010 – Greece unveils stability program on Jan 14, saying it will aim to cut its budget gap to 2.8 percent of GDP in 2012 from 12.7 percent in 2009.
Feb – Greece must refinance 54 billion euros ($66.6 billion) of debt, with a crunch in Q2 as more than 20 billion euros becomes due and market yields for Greek debt soar.
March 5 – Package of public sector pay cuts and tax increases is passed to save an extra 4.8 billion euros. VAT to rise 2 percentage points to 21 percent; state-funded pensions frozen in 2010.
April 11 — Euro zone finance ministers approve 30 billion euros ($40.67 billion) emergency aid mechanism for Greece.
April 15 – Greek parliament passes law that seeks to tackle tax evasion and shift tax burden to higher earners.
April 22 – Eurostat says Greece’s 2009 budget deficit is 13.6 percent of GDP, not 12.7 percent as reported earlier.
April 23 – Prime Minister George Papandreou asks for activation of an EU/IMF aid package. Read more…
Putin Delivers Big, Mocking Speech Of US Debt, Trade Balance, And Out Of Control Fed
Russian Prime minister Vladimir Putin has called U.S. monetary policy “hooliganism” in a speech before his country’s parliament.
Putin also criticized the U.S. debt situation, and said Russia could not conduct its policy similarly.
“We see that everything is not so good for our friends in the States,” Putin told lawmakers in the lower house of parliament. “Look at their trade balance, their debt, and budget. They turn on the printing press and flood the world with dollars,” he said.
The speech seems pretty typical Putin, applauding himself for recent Russian successes, but it’s made in the context of the 2012 Russian presidential election, in which Putin is expected to run against current president Dmitry Medvedev.
He’s continued to emphasize the fact that Russia Read more…
True Obama debt bigger than planet’s entire GDP
 President Obama |
As the Obama administration prepares to finance a Fiscal Year 2011 budget deficit expected to top $1.6 trillion, the American public is largely unaware that the true negative net worth of the federal government reached $76.3 trillion last year.
That figure was five times the 2010 gross domestic product of the United States and exceeded the estimated gross domestic product for the world by approximately $14.4 trillion.
According to the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. GDP for 2010 was $14.861 trillion. World GDP in 2010, according to the International Monetary Fund, was $61.936 trillion.
“As government obligations continue to spiral out of control and the U.S. government shows no willingness to make the magnitude of spending cuts required to return to fiscal responsible, the U.S. economy is headed to a great collapse coming in the form of a hyper-inflationary great Read more…
Japan catastrophe could make U.S. debt costlier
The U.S. Treasury market could feel financial aftershocks from Japan’s tragic U.S. Treasury. Offloading some of the Asian giant’s $1 trillion of foreign reserves could raise cash to help rebuild after Friday’s disaster. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is due to end its Treasury bond-buying program in June. If Japan, the second-biggest foreign holder, starts selling that’s another support gone — with the potential to make borrowing more expensive for the U.S. government.
It’s too early to estimate the cost the Japanese government and private sectors will have to shoulder for reconstruction efforts. But bond investors can’t any longer take for granted that Japan will leave its ample reserves intact as it has, broadly speaking, for the past several years. For the government, cashing in could be more palatable than yet more borrowing. Japan’s debt already amounted to more than 200 percent of Read more…
Debt now equals total U.S. economy
President Obama speaks at Parkville Middle School and Center of Technology, in Parkville, Md., Monday, Feb., 14, 2011. At right is Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob Lew. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
President Obama projects that the gross federal debt will top $15 trillion this year, officially equaling the size of the entire U.S. economy, and will jump to nearly $21 trillion in five years’ time.
Amid the other staggering numbers in the budget Mr. Obama sent to Congress on Monday, the debt stands out — both because Congress will need to vote to raise the debt limit later this year, and because the numbers are so large.
Mr. Obama‘s budget said 2011 will see the biggest one-year jump in debt in history, or nearly $2 trillion in a single year. And the administration says it will reach $15.476 trillion by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, to reach Read more…
The coming US Depression has an added dimension: “…a huge underclass of very desperate people with their minds chemically blown beyond anybody’s comprehension” which may fuel unprecedented unrest.
by Tom Dennen
Money talks and here is what it is saying: Here are the Current Account Balances of 163 Countries in the World COMPARED WITH LEVELS OF STREET VIOLENCE (all except Egypt at the bottom of the debt list) :
Notice the amazing entry at the bottom of this list (scroll down) taken from Gerald Celentes’ Trends Journal, the full report, 2011.The Current Account Balance records a country’s net trade in goods and services, plus net earnings from rents, interest, profits, and dividends, and net transfer payments (such as pension funds and worker remittances) to and from the rest of the world during the period specified. These figures are calculated on an exchange rate basis, i.e., not in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms.
China is No. 1, Hong Kong No. 15, Egypt N.37 … check who is No. 163
World Ranking – Current Acct Balance (in Millions of US$)
1 People’s Republic of China (PRC) 179,100
2 Japan 174,400
3 Germany 134,800 Read more…
U.S., Japan told time running out to deal with debt
IMF warns Japan and United States on need to tackle debt
* Politics make reining in U.S., Japan deficits difficult
* S&P downgrades Japan, sees no strategy to handle debt
* Bond markets calm on Friday, Japan vows fiscal discipline (Adds bullet points)
By Tetsushi Kajimoto and Lesley Wroughton
TOKYO/WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) – Japan and the United States faced new pressure to confront their swollen budget deficits as the IMF and rating agencies demanded more evidence they can bring their public debts under control.
The International Monetary Fund said the G7’s two biggest economies needed to spell out credible deficit-cutting plans before the markets lose patience and dump their bonds.
On Friday, Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan vowed to push ahead with tax reforms aimed at curbing the country’s debt, but an uncooperative opposition and divisions within his own party on policy make the chances of success slim.
“The important thing is to maintain fiscal discipline and ensure market confidence in Japan’s public finances,” Kan, who took over in June as Japan’s fifth premier since 2006, told parliament’s upper house.
Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s cut Japan’s long-term debt rating on Thursday for the first time since 2002, and hours later Moody’s Investors Service warned the risk of the United States losing its top AAA rating, although small, was rising. Read more…
Record U.S. deficit projected this year
The still-fragile economy and fresh tax cuts approved by Congress last month will drive the federal deficit to nearly $1.5 trillion this year, the biggest budget gap in U.S. history, congressional budget analysts said Wednesday.
The grim forecast from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office came hours after President Obama called in his State of the Union address for Republicans and Democrats to work together to rein in record deficits that are pushing the national debt into uncharted territory. At $1.5 trillion, the deficit would equal 9.8 percent of the economy, the CBO said, making it one of the largest by that measure since the end of World War II.
Lawmakers scrambled on Wednesday to respond to the darkening budget picture, with Republicans pressing their call for sharp and immediate cuts in domestic spending. Twenty-one Senate Republicans, meanwhile, unveiled a plan to amend the Constitution to require balanced budgets, a top priority of the tea party movement.
Democrats resisted both initiatives, arguing that amending the Constitution, a lengthy process that requires a vote in all 50 state legislatures, would do little to address the current problem. They dismissed as “drastic” a proposal by House Republicans to slash $100 billion from the current budget, arguing that cuts of that magnitude would endanger a million jobs on public- and private-sector payrolls at a time when the unemployment rate already stands at 9.4 percent.
“We have to cut government, but Republicans are going at this with meat ax when what is needed is a Read more…
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](https://i0.wp.com/www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/gold/t24_au_en_usoz_2.gif)
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](https://i0.wp.com/www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/silver/t24_ag_en_usoz_2.gif)
crisisboom
CRISISBOOM 
You must be logged in to post a comment.