Children ‘dumped in streets by Greek parents who can’t afford to look after them any more’
Children are being abandoned on Greece’s streets by their poverty-stricken families who cannot afford to look after them any more.
Youngsters are being dumped by their parents who are struggling to make ends meet in what is fast becoming the most tragic human consequence of the Euro crisis.
It comes as pharmacists revealed the country had almost run out of aspirin, as multi-billion euro austerity measures filter their way through society.
Abandoned: Children are being dumped on Greece’s streets by their poverty-stricken families who cannot afford to look after them any more (file picture)
Athens’ Ark of the World youth centre said four children, including a newborn baby, had been left on its doorstep in recent months.
One mother, it said, ran away after handing over her two-year-old daughter Natasha.
Four-year-old Anna was found by a teacher clutching a note
MF Global sold assets to Goldman before collapse: sources
MF Global unloaded hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of securities to Goldman Sachs in the days leading up to its collapse, according to two former MF Global employees with direct knowledge of the transactions. But it did not immediately receive payment from its clearing firm and lender, JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM – News), one of the sources said.
The sale of securities to Goldman occurred on October 27, just days before MF Global Holdings Ltd (Other OTC:MFGLQ.PK – News) filed for bankruptcy on October 31, the ex-employees said. One of the employees said the transaction was cleared with JPMorgan Chase.
At the same time MF Global, which was run by former Goldman Sachs head Jon Corzine, was selling securities to Goldman to raise badly needed cash, the futures firm was also drawing down a $1.2 billion revolving line of credit it had with JPMorgan, according to one of the former MF Global employees.
JPMorgan spokeswoman Mary Sedarat said the bank did not withold money because of the line of credit. She declined further comment on details of the transactions.
Read More:http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mf-global-sold-assets-goldman-134258814.html
The speculative scrum driving up food prices
Bankers, hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds are gambling on hunger by speculating on food supply. Global regulators should step in to stop them
High-frequency traders and momentum-driven hedge funds made it their business to speculate on food in 2011. Photograph: Tim Wimborne/Reuters
Last year, the price of global food floated high as ever. That’s bad news for most of us, but not for those who trade commodities. In fact, 2011 was a great year for the traders, who thrive on bad news, currency woes, drought, flood, freeze, fire and all other manifestations of imminent apocalypse.
2011 was a wild ride. One spring morning, cocoa futures dropped 12% in less than a minute. Corn ascended to all-time peaks and sugar fluctuated more in one day than it used to in a month. Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, railed against speculators in coffee, while PepsiCo forecast its own medium-term commodity cost increases to exceed $1bn. All of which meant a bumper crop for the world’s commodity exchanges – even those that used to be backwaters, like the Kansas City Board of Trade and the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, both of which recorded their highest electronic trading volumes in history.
It was a volatile year, and the volatility posed problems for the food industry. Faced with a high-stakes game of price-shifting basic ingredients, the world’s largest food processors and retailers put out the call for maths PhDs and economic modellers to theorise and implement ever-more complex risk-management strategies just so they could keep up with the second-by-second spikes and dips of grain and livestock futures. In the meantime, high-frequency traders and momentum-driven hedge funds made it their business to speculate on food.
‘Mother of all bank runs’ has already begun in eurozone
Uncertainty over the future of the eurozone runs high, despite last week’s high-on-hot-air agreement on moving towards greater fiscal union. And that uncertainty is driving European banks into a severe liquidity crunch that could cause the region’s entire banking system to collapse, analysts fear.
The early warning signs of such a liquidity seizure are already showing up in the troubles that European banks face in raising short-term liquidity. French, Italian and Spanish banks have run out of collateral (typically US Treasures) that they put up to finance short-term loans, and have been forced to pledge their gold reserves in order to secure dollar funding, reports The Telegraph.
Some European banks have resorted to selling foreign assets to meet their capital requirements; others have cut back on their lending to industry.
Money is to the economy what blood is to the human body. So long as both are circulating smoothly, they’re doing fine. But when liquidity starts to choke in the veins of the economy, as is happening now, it points to a coming seizure. Which is the worry that keeps bankers and analysts up at night these days.
Investors are beginning to lose their faith in the banking system, and have begun a ‘bank run’ that could snowball into a full-blown crisis.
The “collateral crunch” has come about because the banks’ traditional means of raising funds are running dry as investors, worried about the survival of the euro, are pulling out their savings or are easing up bank bond purchase.
Essentially, what this signals is that investors are beginning to lose their faith in the banking system, and have begun a ‘bank run’ that could snowball into a full-blown crisis.
Read More:http://www.firstpost.com/world/mother-of-all-bank-runs-has-already-begun-in-eurozone-154124.html
Apple loses iPad trademark case in China
Apple could face disruption to its iPad sales in China after a court rejected its claim to own the iPad trademark in the country and a rival sought to halt sales of the tablet device in two Chinese cities.
The developments are the latest in a long-running dispute between Apple and Proview Technology (Shenzhen), a struggling Taiwanese-owned company that registered trademarks for the name IPAD in many countries long before Apple conceived its smash hit tablet computer.
Read More: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/6bc5ba86-20b7-11e1-8133-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1fsvrbzPz
UBS’ Advice On What To Buy In Case Of Eurozone Breakup: "Precious Metals, Tinned Goods And Small Calibre Weapons"
As EU technocrats attempt to seize total control over national economies by exploiting the eurozone debt crisis to empower and enrich their own corrupt institutions, top banks like UBS are on hand to supply a helpful deluge of doomsday rhetoric in order to grease the skids for the takeover.
Warning that if a “fix” is not implemented imminently the world faces financial collapse, UBS’ Larry Hataway presents numerous “end of the world” scenarios in arguing that the eurozone needs to be preserved in its current form.
The whole piece is nothing less than an exercise in scaremongering. At one point, Hataway compares the situation to “the horrors of the first half of the 20th century,” suggesting that the crisis is on a similar scale to the impact of both world wars.
Hataway emphasizes his point by urging people to stock up on guns, food and gold.
“I suppose there might be some assets worthy of consideration—precious metals, for example. But other metals would make wise investments, too. Among them tinned goods and small calibre weapons,” he writes.
While such investment advice actually makes sense in the current climate, fearmongering about such dire scenarios is of course a ruse to browbeat Europeans into accepting the complete takeover of their countries by unelected technocrats.
As we reported yesterday, Brussels is preparing to change the Lisbon Treaty with the stroke of a pen in a bid to seize absolute control over euro member states in financial trouble. Under the terms of the new deal, the European Commission would be empowered “to impose austerity measures on eurozone countries that are being bailed out, usurping the functions of government in countries such as Greece, Ireland, or Portugal.”
ation states would have to prostrate themselves in front of unelected EU technocrats in order to get their budgets approved, an outcome that would allow EU elitists to usurp “intrusive control” over national policy.
As part of this process, the pension funds of millions of Europeans will be raided to meet EU-IMF imposed austerity cuts. Portugal has already begun to transfer the assets from four of Portugal’s biggest banks to the state balance sheet in order to cut budget deficits as part of the requirements of its €78bn euro bailout.
read More:http://www.prisonplanet.com/ubs-on-euro-break-up-buy-gold-tinned-goods-and-guns.html
Italy’s Welfare Minister In Tears Over Austerity Sacrifices
Italian Welfare Minister Elsa Fornero broke down in tears as she announced an end to inflation indexing on all but the lowest pension bands, a move that will mean an effective income cut for many pensioners.
The government unveiled a package of painful austerity measures on Sunday night — so painful, indeed, that one of the ministers began to weep as she explained them to the press. Announcing that all but the lowest pensions would be frozen next year, Fornero was unable to say the word "sacrifices" and, brushing tears from her eyes, brought her presentation to an abrupt close.
Anxious Greeks Emptying Their Bank Accounts
By Ferry Batzoglou in Athens
Many Greeks are draining their savings accounts because they are out of work, face rising taxes or are afraid the country will be forced to leave the euro zone. By withdrawing money, they are forcing banks to scale back their lending — and are inadvertently making the recession even worse.
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Georgios Provopoulos, the governor of the central bank of Greece, is a man of statistics, and they speak a clear language. "In September and October, savings and time deposits fell by a further 13 to 14 billion euros. In the first 10 days of November the decline continued on a large scale," he recently told the economic affairs committee of the Greek parliament.
With disarming honesty, the central banker explained to the lawmakers why the Greek economy isn’t managing to recover from a recession that has gone on for three years now: "Our banking system lacks the scope to finance growth."
He means that the outflow of funds from Greek bank accounts has been accelerating rapidly. At the start of 2010, savings and time deposits held by private households in Greece totalled €237.7 billion — by the end of 2011, they had fallen by €49 billion. Since then, the decline has been gaining momentum. Savings fell by a further €5.4 billion in September and by an estimated €8.5 billion in October — the biggest monthly outflow of funds since the start of the debt crisis in late 2009.
The raid on bank accounts stems from deep uncertainty in Greek households which culminated in early November during the political turmoil that followed the announcement by then-Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou of a referendum on the second Greek bailout package.
Papandreou withdrew the plan and stepped down following an outcry among other European leaders against the referendum, and a new government was formed on Nov. 11 under former central banker Loukas Papademos. That appears to have slowed the drop in bank savings, at least for the time being.
Bank Withdrawals Worsening Crisis
Nevertheless, the Greeks today only have €170 billion in savings — almost 30 percent less than at the start of 2010.
The hemorrhaging of bank savings has had a disastrous impact on the economy. Many companies have had to tap into their reserves during the recession because banks have become more reluctant to lend. More Greek families are now living off their savings because they have lost their jobs or have had their salaries or pensions cut.
Read More:http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,802051,00.html
Prepare for the End of the Euro, UK Banks Told
‘Alarm at the economic turmoil in Europe intensified last night after the Government admitted preparations for the chaotic collapse of the euro were being “stepped up”. Downing Street is understood to be embroiled in intensive “contingency planning” for Greece and possibly Italy, Spain and Portugal quitting the eurozone. British banks have been urged by the City’s watchdog to brace themselves for the collapse of the single currency.’
Italy’s footballers to tackle country’s ailing finances
Italy’s best-paid footballers have been urged to pitch in and ease the country’s precarious finances by buying government bonds in a special sale on Monday.
The union representing many of Italy’s multi-millionaire footballers has urged players to do their bit
for their country’s by buying government bonds at a time when they are being dumped by panicky investors fearing a default.
"We all support this country and above all we believe in its strength," Damiano Tommasi, director of the AIC Italian Association of Footballers, said in a letter.
The AIC represents many of Italy’s multi-millionaire Serie A footballers including Roma’s Francesco Totti and Juventus’ Alessandro Del Piero.
The Italian Banking Association is to hold a special bond sale day on Monday, with banks planning to waive commission fees for clients who buy up government bonds.
The sale has received support from several prominent Italians, including the AIC union.
Tommasi, a former Roma and Italy midfielder, said he had written to all the captains of Italy’s professional football teams urging them to persuade their teammates to participate in the bond sale on Monday.
Read More:http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15560493,00.html
Fed, Five Central Banks Cut Dollar Swap Rate
Six central banks led by the Federal Reserve lowered the cost of emergency dollar funding for financial companies in a global effort to ease Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis.
The new interest rate is the dollar overnight index swap rate plus 50 basis points, a half percentage-point cut, and the program was extended by six months to Feb. 1, 2013, the Fed said today in a statement in Washington. The Fed coordinated the move with the European Central Bank as well as the Bank of Canada, Bank of England, Bank of Japan, and Swiss National Bank. (SNBN)
U.S. and European stocks rallied on the move aimed at easing strains in markets and boosting central banks’ capacity to support the global financial system. The cost for European banks to fund in dollars rose to the highest levels in three years today as concerns about a possible breakup of the euro area increased after leaders said they’d failed to boost the region’s bailout fund as much as planned.
“It’s a step in the right direction,” said Jay Bryson, global economist with Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte, North Carolina. “It doesn’t solve the problem in Europe, but to the extent that European banks are having trouble raising dollar funding, it makes it easier and less costly for these banks to borrow dollars.”
The six central banks also agreed to create temporary bilateral swap programs so funding can be provided in any of the currencies “should market conditions so warrant.” Those swap lines were also authorized through Feb. 1, 2013.
CRASH 2: “The eurozone is now a plague village” claims German banking source.
The Slog’s Bankfurt ‘Maulwurf’ insisted late yesterday afternoon EST that “The money is pulling out of Europe so fast now, the ECB will have to act within days, or we will be cut off like a mediaeval plague village. The eurozone has endemic Black Death, and nobody beyond our borders wants to catch it.”
Surfing across a variety of columns and new items this morning, it’s hard to not to accept his opinion. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski made a dramatic appeal to Germany in Berlin yesterday, calling for more leadership in the euro zone crisis, and insisting “You know full well that nobody else can do it”. On Sunday the world’s greatest europhile Wolfgang Munchau talked of liquidity in the EU ‘grinding to a halt’, and yesterday evening Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at the Telegraph =gave some terrifying figures in the same vein.
But otherwise, in the first chance I’ve had in ten days to pump the Frankfurt mole about the developing ‘zero bank haircut’ plan, the man was not for pumping. Some of what he had to say, however, was quite intriguing:
“I think there has been some shift in opinion in Germany, that it is time for Berlin to show some leadership. But the German public are being kept in the dark about much of this. If they knew how much commitment Angela Merkel is drifting towards right now, the situation there would be very different. [Finance Minister] Schauble is always one step ahead of the media….nobody can keep up – not even the Chancellor at times.”
Where, I asked, did he stand now?
“Where I have since late 2010 – we should leave the eurozone and move to another arrangement. Had we done so earlier, the markets would not now be able to hound us as they do. It is utterly ridiculous that Germany is being treated as if she had a pressing debt problem, and it is all down to the Merkel Government’s indecision.”
But is he representative of German banking?
“I know [Jens] Weidmann [at the German Bundesbank] is fully behind my viewpoint that no more debt should be bought by either our Central Bank or the ECB. I know of many people in senior positions in private banking who remain wary of what Merkel will end up doing. If we knew what this will be, mind you, it would be helpful. Schauble remains an unknown, but he is one for the big idea. This has many professionals deeply concerned in Germany.”
And the ‘zero bank haircut’ proposition?
“I can’t comment about that. What I can tell you is that this [ESM/EFSF Summit] session over the next two days is yet another waste of time. What other ideas are under the table, well, it wouldn’t be constructive to say right now”.
The Slog’s Maulwurf is, at the end of the day, a banker. But first and foremost he is a eurosceptic who thinks Germany should cut her losses. My own view – firming up as time goes on – is that the Summitry is at least partly designed to muddy the waters in relation to the Big Idea originally hatched by France’s Sorbonniers.
Money Found in Britain May Belong to MF Global
About $200 million in customer money that vanished from MF Global is believed to have surfaced at JPMorgan Chase in Britain, according to people briefed on the matter. The discovery could be the most significant breakthrough in a monthlong hunt for the missing funds.
During MF Global’s last chaotic days, the brokerage firm overdrew an account at JPMorgan, according to another person who is close to the matter. Some investigators now believe the firm used customer funds to patch at least some of the hole, which would have been a significant breach of federal law.
MF Global transferred the roughly $200 million in the days before the firm filed for bankruptcy, said the people, who requested anonymity because the investigation was incomplete.
Some investigators suspect that the transfer to JPMorgan was the first major misuse of customer money at MF Global, the commodity brokerage powerhouse once run by Jon S. Corzine, the former Democratic governor of New Jersey. Authorities are also looking into whether JPMorgan initially questioned the source of the cash and sought proof from MF Global that it was complying with regulations, one of the people said.
Read More.:http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/money-found-in-britain-may-belong-to-mf-global/
80% Of Bond Managers Expect QE3 In 2012, Says JPMorgan
Ever the contrarian, we were somewhat taken aback by the overwhelming majority of respondents to JPMorgan’s fixed income manager survey who expect LSAPs in 2012. With 80% expecting QE3, a majority expecting to add to Agency MBS (and high yield and investment grade credit), it seems the Fed’s bang for buck from actually enacting the balance sheet expansion will be significantly lower than it hopes. Maybe third time is the charm but it seems evident from discussions that traders have become numb to this manipulation – even if it does have short-term portfolio rotation impacts – but the difference between managers who expect to reduce EUR assets and those that expect to increase USD assets suggests everyone and their cat is waiting to jump in.
The diversification/currency trade seems popular as local denominated EM assets are among the classes managers expect to add the most to but duration risk seems very evenly split as the great majority expect 10Y to hold the 1.5% to 2.5% range.
It also seems they are more positive on the European endgame (despite a view to reduce EUR assets) as two-thirds do NOT expect Greece to leave the Euro next year and 75% do not expect any other country to leave by 2013.
It seems the lack of belief in any significant fiscal stimulus is being discounted by the strong belief that the Fed will ride to the rescue once again.
Source:http://www.zerohedge.com/news/80-bond-managers-expect-qe3-2012-says-jpmorgan
Moody’s issues eurozone credit warning
Credit-rating agency says sovereign-debt crisis is putting all eurozone countries at risk.
Moody’s, a credit-rating agency, has warned that the credit ratings of all economies in the eurozone are under threat because of the sovereign-debt crisis.
The agency released a statement this morning (28 November) saying that “institutiona
l weaknesses” in the region were hindering leaders’ abilities to put an end to the turmoil.
While France’s triple-A rating has looked in peril for several months, this announcement is the first time that the eurozone’s other top-ranking economies – including Germany, Finland, Austria and the Netherlands – have been put under the microscope.
“The continued rapid escalation of the euro area sovereign and banking credit crisis is threatening the credit standing of all European sovereigns,” Moody’s warned. “In the absence of policy measures that stabilise market conditions over the short term, or those conditions stabilising for any other reason, credit risk will continue to rise.”
The agency blamed political instability in Greece and Italy, uncertainty around the final ‘haircut’ imposed on holders of Greek debt, the emphasis in the conclusions of a eurozone summit of 28 October on “the conditional nature of the existing support programmes”, and “the further worsening of the economic outlook” in the eurozone.
Reports in the Italian press suggest that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is preparing to grant financial help to Italy as it struggles to pay off its debt.
It is believed that the IMF is considering help worth €600 billion, much more than would be available from the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), in return for sweeping austerity measures and structural reform.
According to reports in German media, the six eurozone countries that have a triple-A credit rating (Germany, France, Austria, the Netherlands, Finland and Luxembourg) are working on plans for joint issuance of so-called ‘elite bonds’. These bonds would be issued to raise funds for other eurozone countries in financial difficulties.
The discussions about elite bonds reflect problems affecting the EFSF, which does not have enough funds to assist Spain and Italy if those countries needed financial assistance. The EFSF has around €200bn-€250bn available to help struggling eurozone countries but Spain and Italy would require more than double that amount each.
Moody’s cuts Hungary to "junk," government sees attack
Credit rating agency Moody’s cut Hungary’s debt to "junk" grade late on Thursday, dealing a blow to Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s unorthodox economic policies and prompting his government to denounce the move as a "financial attack."
Moody’s lowered Hungary’s sovereign rating by one notch to Ba1, just
below investment grade, with a negative outlook, hours after rival Standard & Poor’s held fire on a flagged downgrade after Budapest said it would seek international aid.
The move followed warnings from all three major ratings agencies that Orban’s policies, which have eschewed traditional austerity in favor of revenue-boosting steps like a special bank tax and the nationalization of $14 billion in pension assets, had put Hungary’s finances at risk.
It also came after Orban relaunched aid talks this week with the International Monetary Fund, a dramatic reversal after he cut cooperation with the Fund short last year after sweeping a 2010 election on a vow to regain "economic sovereignty."
Moody’s cited rising uncertainty about Hungary’s ability to meet fiscal goals, high debt levels and what it called increasingly constrained medium-term growth prospects.
"Moody’s believes that the combined impact of these factors will adversely impact the government’s financial strength and erode its shock-absorption capacity," it said in a statement.
Read More:http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/25/us-hungary-moodys-idUSTRE7AO0O620111125
Belgian bond costs soar after government talks fail
The latest collapse in talks to form a government in Belgium has sent investors running, amid fears the core eurozone country could face similar problems to Greece.
Belgian politics is worrying the markets (Photo: o palsson)
The country’s cost of borrowing money soared over five percent on Tuesday (22 November) to an almost-10-year high, after would-be prime minister Elio Di Rupo handed in his resignation on Monday, marking a preliminary end to a-year-and-a-half-long attempts to reach a deal.
Belgian EU trade commissioner Karel De Gucht warned earlier this month that his country might be “next” on the markets’ radars if it did not manage to agree and draw up a budget for 2012. Belgium’s debt is almost at 100 percent of GDP – the third-highest in the eurozone.
The European Commission expects to receive the new budget by mid-December. Next year’s spending programme will have to see cuts of more than €11bn to stay below the EU-imposed deficit ceiling of three percent.
Read More:http://euobserver.com/843/114366
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