Posts from — November 2011

Disappointment

Hey, where’s dinner?

[Editor: ‘Toes’ Underhouse is disappointed that I left the house in the afternoon and wasn’t dropping wet food about. He is the most vocal of the ferals, especially if food is involved.

Friday Ark

The BBC reports that Greece PM Papandreou faces fresh call to resign

Greece’s centre-right opposition has demanded Prime Minister George Papandreou resign, throwing into disarray plans for a unity government.

Opposition leader Antonis Samaras also called for snap elections before leading his MPs in a dramatic walkout of parliament.

Mr Papandreou’s government faces a crucial confidence vote on Friday.

He earlier said that opposition support could mean dropping controversial plans for a referendum on an EU bailout.

I’m with ‘Noz, Papandreou should get while the getting is good, and not stand at the helm while Sarkozy and Merkel force the Greeks over the waterfall. There is a much better solution to the problem, but banks don’t want it to happen.

CNN/Money reports on two studies that show that Many companies pay no income taxes, study finds. They are raking in record profits, but some of them are actually applying for rebates. There is an Alternate Minimum Tax for individuals, but no equivalent for corporations. The average effective tax rate for the Fortune 500 seems to be around 18.5%, not the 35% that people claim it is.

In the better news column is an article that notes that in the last four weeks credit unions have gained 650,000 new members and $4.5 billion in deposits. During all of last year only 600,000 people joined credit unions. The switch corresponds to the Bank of America decision to start charging customers for debit card use.

The ABC reports that Merkel, Sarkozy read riot act to Greece

The leaders of Germany and France have told Greece it will not get another cent in European aid until it decides whether it wants to stay in the eurozone.

Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel held talks with Greek prime minister George Papandreou on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Cannes this morning after Mr Papandreou announced shock plans to hold a referendum on the country’s multi-billion-euro bail-out deal.

After the talks, German chancellor Ms Merkel said: “We would rather achieve a stabilisation of the euro with Greece than without Greece, but this goal of stabilising the euro is more important.”

French president Mr Sarkozy hammered home the same message, telling a joint news conference with Ms Merkel: “Our Greek friends must decide whether they want to continue the journey with us.”

Those who have been playing along at home are aware that the vast majority of the money being ‘loaned’ to Greece is actually being paid to French and German banks. What has Angie and Nick so upset it that if the Greeks don’t play along, it will be French and German taxpayers who will have to keep their banks solvent, rather than the Greeks.

To be absolutely clear – it isn’t the Greeks who are being bailed out, it’s the banks. The ‘technocrats’ who come up with the assistance packages are part of the financial system that caused the global meltdown.

CBS reports that Tennessee agrees to stop arresting protesters. They are just admitting reality as a Tennessee judge has already ruled that the executive order they were using for the arrests wasn’t legal. Federal District Judge Aleta Trauger told the attorneys for Tennessee that what they had done was a “clear prior restraint on free speech rights”.

I guess we are going to need to haul city after city into a Federal court at great cost to taxpayers in order to convince politicians that the Bill of Rights isn’t a suggestion.

The US further isolates itself in support of the Likud: U.S. cuts UNESCO funding after Palestinian vote

(CBS/AP) WASHINGTON – The Obama administration on Monday cut off funding for the U.N. cultural agency, after its member countries defied an American warning and approved a Palestinian bid for full membership in the body.

The lopsided vote to admit Palestine as a member of UNESCO, which only the United States and 13 other countries opposed, triggered a long-standing congressional ban on U.S. funding to U.N. bodies that recognize Palestine as a state before an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal is reached. The State Department said a $60 million payment to UNESCO scheduled for November would not be made as a result, and U.S. officials warned of a “cascade” effect at other U.N. bodies that might follow UNESCO’s lead.

If you don’t pay your dues, you don’t get to vote. The Likud wing of the US Congress made it a law that the US can’t support organizations that formally recognize the existence of Palestine, so we will lose our membership in organization after organization.

I’m still waiting to hear what benefit the US derives from the support of the failed policies of the Israeli government.

Merkel and Sarkozy are in crisis mode and ‘casinos’ around the world are having the vapors after the vicious, underhanded action by the Greek prime minister. The BBC has the gruesome details: Greece’s Papandreou in crisis talks over bailout revolt

Greece’s government is holding an emergency meeting following a day of turmoil triggered by PM George Papandreou’s announcement of a referendum on the proposed EU bailout.

One MP from the governing Pasok party has resigned, cutting Mr Papandreou’s parliament majority to two.

Six other leading party members have called on him to resign.

US and European markets, calmed by last week’s EU bailout plan, have fallen sharply since the announcement.

The Greek government also faces a crucial confidence vote in parliament on Friday.

Apparently asking the people in a democratic country what they think of living in enforced poverty to prevent the greedy bankers from suffering the fate of losers is beyond the pale for the Euro zone.

The banks are panicked by having to actually state their real assets, rather than the ‘creative’ numbers that currently appear on their balance sheets. Their real concern is that this will lead to the Iceland procedure of sending bankers to jail and making the gamblers absorb their own losses.

Papandreou knows that implementing the latest ‘fix’ will just make matters worse, and there are already violent clashes in the streets and a series of strikes. Without the explicit agreement of the Greek people, the current plan won’t work.