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France Plans To Prohibit Cash Payments Over €1,000
French actor Gérard Depardieu gesturing to Vladimir Putin after receiving a Russian passport.
One of the best things about covering payments news is that you never run out of stories where various myopic governments attempt to restrict the flow of cash in a squeeze for revenue.
France becomes the latest as Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault plans to erect new controls on cash transactions in order to tighten up tax collection and meet the country’s optimistic budget deficit target of 3% of GDP. The government needs euros and they need some fast.
In the government plan labeled “Fight against fraud,” France’s fiscal residents would see the cash transaction limit decrease from €3,000 to €1,000 per purchase. However, in a nod to the exiled wealthy and what Wolf Richter calls the “Depardieu exception,” those fiscal residents of a country other than France would have their cash transaction limits reduced from €15,000 to €10,000 per purchase. Legislative measures could be Read more…
Euro crisis and global downturn
Two latest forecasts, one by the UN and another by the IMF, warn of the threat of global downturn and recession in both 2012 and 2013. Unlike the IMF estimates of 3.3 per cent, the UN forecasts show that the growth will be 2.6 per cent only in the current year 2012. The previous forecasts of UN and the IMF for this year were 3.6 and 3.9 per cent respectively. Both predict growth in developed capitalist countries will be 1.2 to 1.3 per cent only amidst very high unemployment and extreme income inequality. They also reveal that countries like China and India will now face economic slow down which have been the locomotive of the global economy, especially since the financial crisis of 2008. These projections, however, do not assess the likely severe adverse effect of steep rise in the prices of petroleum products recently due to increased tensions in the Iranian Peninsula.
Nonetheless, there is broad consensus that despite abrupt withdrawal of fiscal stimulus and bail-outs playing some role in dampening the growth, the major culprit has been the Read more…
Europe on brink of recession, unemployment above 10%
BRUSSELS: Since the start of the year, one phrase has tripped off the lips of European leaders more than any other: “jobs and growth”. After two years of debt crisis and budget austerity, there is a strong desire to shift the narrative on.To that end, the EU’s first summit of 2012, to be held on Jan 30, will focus on finding ways to kickstart growth and create jobs across the 27-country union, which is on the brink of recession and has average unemployment of 10 percent, rising to 45 percent among the young in countries such as Spain.
The problem is that after years of preaching austerity and telling wayward governments to cut spending and raise revenue, there is scarce capital readily available for investment, either at a national level or across the EU budget.
As a result, there is little expectation that Monday’s summit will produce concrete measures to boost either output or employment in the near-term, despite EU leaders first adopting their competitiveness mantra more than a decade ago.
“They don’t have much of a strategy apart from the typical laundry list of structural and labour market reforms, which is fine, but that is Read more…
Poland warns of war ‘in 10 years’ as EU leaders scramble to contain panic
Germany, France and the European Commission are scrambling to contain panic and “quash rumours” about a eurozone break-up amid repeated off-piste messages from other senior EU politicians.
But even amid their desperate efforts, the finance minister of Poland, the country that currently represents the EU to the world as holder of the bloc’s rotating presidency, warned of war on the continent within 10 years if the eurozone collapses.
Speaking to MEPs in Strasbourg on Wednesday morning (14 September) he warned of the need to act rapidly to prevent grave danger for the EU. Making reference to a recent report entitled ‘Euro Break Up – The Consequences’ by Swiss financial giant UBS, he declared: “There is no doubt we are in danger. Europe is Read more…
Wikileaks Discloses The Reason(s) Behind China’s Shadow Gold Buying Spree
Wondering why gold at $1850 is cheap, or why gold at double that price will also be cheap, or frankly at any price? Because, as the following leaked cable explains, gold is, to China at least, nothing but the opportunity cost of destroying the dollar’s reserve status. Putting that into dollar terms is, therefore, impractical at best, and illogical at worst. We have a suspicion that the following cable from the US embassy in China is about to go not viral but very much global, and prompt all those mutual fund managers who are on the golden sidelines to dip a toe in the 24 karat pool. The only thing that matters from China’s perspective is that “suppressing the price of gold is very beneficial for the U.S. in maintaining the U.S. dollar’s role as the Read more…
IMF sees 200 billion euro capital gap at European banks
BRUSSELS — The International Monetary Fund has estimated European banks could face a capital shortfall of 200 billion euros (US$287 billion), a European source said on Wednesday.
The figure has prompted a fierce response from European officials who said the analysis was misleading, according to the Financial Times.
The newspaper, citing two officials, said the 200 billion euro figure was one estimate of the impact of marking sovereign bonds to market.
The IMF will Read more…
Europe Is On The Verge Of Collapsing
Photo by Dieter Heinemann
The scale of impact is unpredictable, but potentially worse than that of the recent toxic assets crisis. The European bloc is the second largest economy, the first trade partner of China, the largest importer of Russian energy and the first buyer of high quality raw materials (it still holds the Hilton quota, the world’s most expensive meat quota).
All over the world European debt holders and many states maintain their reserves in euros. China, for example, has one-fourth of its reserves in such currency and holds a large amount of Greek, Portuguese and Spanish debt bonds….
Without debt restructuring involving important debt amount reductions and extended maturities, Greece will not be able to meet her commitments, just like the rest of Europe’s debt-overhung Europe’s periphery economies – Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Italy, and the effects would certainly contaminate the rest of Europe including the region’s strongest economies.
The illusion of dampening the fire by deferring debt maturities is just that – a chimera. Unless public and private bondholders’ debts are reduced and longer maturities granted, default and meltdown are Read more…
Euro zone boosts powers of rescue fund to aid Greece, Ireland, Portugal
Euro zone leaders agreed at an emergency summit on Thursday to give their financial rescue fund sweeping new powers to help Greece overcome its debt crisis and prevent market instability from spreading through the region.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said leaders of the 17-nation currency area had agreed to ease lending terms to Greece, Ireland and Portugal, while private investors would voluntarily swap their Greek bonds for longer maturities at lower interest rates to help Athens.
Iran Opens Oil Bourse – Harbinger of Trouble for New York and London?
The last three years of global recession have dealt a major blow to American capitalist ideas trumpeted throughout the world on the value of “free markets.” Wall St has been revealed as a form of casino economy, with the bankster insiders gambling with other people’s, and eventually, the government’s money in the form of bailouts. As the Republicans in Congress, scenting victory in the 2012 presidential elections, hold a gun to the Obama administration’s head and rating agencies consider downgrading U.S. government bonds in light of Washington’s possible defaulting, many ideas around the world that previously seemed implausible because of the dominance of the U.S. economy are garnering renewed interest.
Not surprisingly, many of these concepts originate in countries not enamored with Washington’s influence, perhaps none so more than “Axis of Evil” charter member Iran, which has seen its economy Read more…
As The Dollar And The Euro Continue To Collapse, How High Is That Going To Push The Price Of Gold?
Right now, the global financial system is facing a crisis that is really unprecedented. The reserve currency of the world (the U.S. dollar) is collapsing and the second most powerful currency on the planet (the euro) is also collapsing. As the major paper currencies of the globe crumble, the hunger that investors around the world have for gold continues to grow. Today, the price of gold hit an all-time record of $1607.90 an ounce. But that record surely will not live for long. The truth is that gold has been steadily climbing for quite some time now. A year ago, the price of gold was hovering around $1200 an ounce and and many “mainstream economists” scoffed at the idea that the price of gold could go significantly higher. Well, nobody is laughing now. As colossal debt loads continue to crush both Europe and the United States, the euro and the dollar are Read more…
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