Ex-prime minister Tony Blair is the UK candidate for president of the European Council, Europe Minister Baroness Kinnock has apparently confirmed.

At a briefing for journalists in Strasbourg, Lady Kinnock said the UK was supporting Mr Blair for one of the most powerful posts in the EU.

Asked if this had been discussed with Mr Blair, she said the government "would not do that without asking him".

The post depends on Irish backing of the Lisbon Treaty in a referendum.

But this is the first time a UK government minister has publicly announced Tony Blair is a candidate for the job.

Lithuania's Parliament has approved a censorship bill that sharply curbs the spreading of public information that lawmakers say could harm the mental, physical, intellectual and moral development of youngsters. 

The bill bans 19 examples of "detrimental" information that supporting lawmakers consider harmful to the development of Lithuania's minors. The bill prohibits any information that encourages homosexual, bi-sexual or polygamous relations. It also bans information which "subverts family relations and degrades its values". This includes the distribution of images of heterosexual intercourse, death and severe injury.

The bill's amendments, cover a broad range of other topics, including the paranormal, foul language and bad eating habits.

Lithuania's outgoing president Valdas Adamkus, who retired on Sunday, had been highly critical of the bill and vetoed it in June. Under Lithuania's constitution, at least 71 votes were needed to override his veto, a threshold passed with ease. On Tuesday, 86 of the Baltic state's 141 lawmakers voted in favor of the bill, six were against. Adamkus's successor, President Dalia Grybauskaite, cannot re-impose a veto.

Homosexuality is frowned upon by many in Lithuania. The vast majority of the population of 3.3 million is Roman Catholic.

The European Union's top diplomat Javier Solana confirmed on Tuesday that the EU Commission would allow citizens of Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia to travel to the bloc without visas from the beginning of next year. 

Speaking to reporters in the Macedonian capital Skopje, Solana promised improved travel conditions for citizens of the three Balkan countries.

"I bring good news for your country and the citizens," Solana said as he arrived in Macedonia as a part of his tour of western Balkans.

Solana arrived from Belgrade, where on Monday he also promised Serbian citizens "good news" about visa-free travel.

"In a few days you will receive very good news on the visa regime liberalization for the Serbian people," Solana said after meeting with Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic.

Poland's Jerzy Buzek has been elected the European Parliament's first president from the former-communist east. The right man for the job, says his predecessor Hans-Gert Poettering in an interview with Deutsche Welle.  

What were some of the positive and negative aspects of your presidency of the European Parliament?

I believe that the last two and a half years were very successful and good years. We managed to pass the climate change legislation through the European Parliament in December 2008, which was, I believe, the most important achievement. Basically, the debate about the fight against climate change began in March 2007during the German EU presidency under Chancellor Angela Merkel. We concluded the legislative process in December 2008 under the French presidency, and we worked very closely with the respective presidencies in order to finalize the legislation.

The Czech government has called for EU solidarity after Canada decided to stop its visa-free regime with Prague due to an increasing number of Czech Roma applicants for asylum in Canada.

Two years after abolishing visa requirements for Czechs as a new member nation of the European Union, Canada re-introduced the visa obligation for all visitors from the country on Tuesday (14 July), following several diplomatic warnings about the likely move.

Czech PM Jan Fischer (r) has lobbyied the European Commission on the issue

Although aware of the problem of asylum seekers of Roma origin and Ottawa's plans to tackle it, Czech officials stated that the decision was one-sided and unfair and should be protested by all of Europe.

As a response Prague withdrew its ambassador to Canada and imposed visas for Canadian diplomats. Imposition of visas for all Canadian citizens would need to be agreed in co-operation with other EU states.

But the Czech government has also officially requested the European Commission to invoke the bloc's solidarity procedure which could theoretically result in a decision by all 27 EU member states to introduce visa to Canada.

He didn't have an eye patch or a wooden leg, but a Scandinavian pirate still made a big entrance as he arrived at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Dozens of photographers and journalists greeted Christian Engström as he arrived for his first day as a Euro MP.
 
Dressed casually in jeans and loafers, the former computer programmer was the first member of the Swedish Pirate Party to take his seat in the chamber, where he plans to use his five-year term to promote internet file-sharing rights in Europe.
 
Despite the overwhelming attention, Mr Engström didn't seem in the least bit intimated by his first taste of the world of politics as he took his maiden steps through the rounded glass-and-steel building in the Alsatian city.

"I expected the attention. I think it's because of the issues we represent.

"Internet politics is a new area and it's important to all of Europe. And obviously, the internet does not have any borders," he said stressing the need for more rights in the digital environment.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso has expressed concern at a judgement by Germany's constitutional court on the Lisbon Treaty, fearing it could undermine the "European project."

The possible implications of the 147-page ruling is slowly becoming clear after the initial relief expressed in Brussels that the EU's new treaty was given the green light.

The German judgement has raised concerns in Brussels

Germany's judges on 30 June said the Lisbon document is compatible with the country's constitution but said parliament should have the final say if the EU wanted to extend the competences beyond what is contained in the treaty.

They also criticised the European Parliament - set to gain greater co-legislative powers under the treaty - as not being representative of the will of the European people but rather a body representing member states.

In addition, the judges ruled that Germany's highest court should have final say on interpretation of EU law allowing it to overturn judgements by the bloc's highest court, the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Political group leaders in the European Parliament are on Thursday set to decide to put a vote on Jose Manuel Barroso's bid for a second term as European commission president on September's plenary agenda.

The move follows a gentleman's agreement between the three biggest groups in the parliament, the centre-right EPP, the Socialists and the Liberals.

Mr Barroso - currently working on political guidelines for the next commission programme  "Tomorrow we will set the date for a vote in September," said Joseph Daul, head of the EPP, on Wednesday (15 July), whose group is the key supporter of Mr Barroso.

Mr Daul also sought to reassure the Portuguese politician that the political group still fully supports him as debate within parliament's walls about his candidacy is getting increasingly strident.

"Our candidate is Mr Barroso. We stick by him through thick and thin."

The EU's High Representative for foreign affairs has just announced that he will leave his post this autumn. Forever dependent on member states' goodwill, his record is a mixed one, reports Gazeta Wyborcza.

On one occasion, at an EU summit press conference which continued until well after midnight, I remember seeing Javier Solana nod off on the platform next to Angela Merkel. When she finally passed him the  microphone, he did not know what was happening, and fell back on telling stories, before finally saying "enough is enough." A few days ago in an interview with the Spanish daily ABC, he used the "enough" word again -- "It's time to go. Ten years is more than enough" -- and confirmed that he would not be seeking a further mandate. Officially, he will be leaving in October, but everyone is already wondering who will be the "new" Solana.

For diplomats, journalists, and EU political analysts, Spain's Solana is not just a former foreign minister, an ex-general secretary of NATO, or the current coordinator of EU foreign policy -- he is the "so-called head" of Europe's "so-called diplomatic service." That may sound like a lot of "so-calleds," and it certainly is. But bear in mind that in the field of EU foreign policy, many things remain on the level of "so-called" -- not least, our so-called embassies, so-called unity, and so-called firmness -- while real diplomacy is conducted by EU member states, who jealously guard their territory. Throughout his ten-year tenure, Solana has proved to be a skillful navigator of the world of "so-called" diplomacy, making his mark as the face and the ears of the Union, and even -- as we saw with the Iranian nuclear programme -- its negotiator. And, there is no denying the enormous amount of work he has contributed as Europe's tireless emissary. In a decade of service to the Union, he must have spent two years on planes -- putting out fires in the Balkans, and in the Middle East, and keeping alive hopes for a meaningful European commitment in unstable regions of the world.

Prices across the eurozone were lower in June than a year earlier, Eurostat, the EU's statistical office confirmed on Wednesday, reflecting lower oil and petrol prices rather than a sustained move to deflation.

Across the eurozone, prices were 0.1 per cent lower in June than a year earlier, with the fastest drop in prices recorded in Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg, confirming an earlier "flash estimate" from Eurostat.

Although the European Central Bank will be concerned to see inflation falling so rapidly below its target of "below but close to 2 per cent", it will be reassured that persistent deflation is not yet a likelihood because of a one-off fall in petrol prices affecting the overall inflation rate.

The funding shortfall faced by the UK's defined benefit pension schemes broke back through the £200 billion barrier during June, figures have shown. The deficit of the 7,400 defined benefit schemes, including final salary pensions, widened to £200.1 billion during the month, after dipping below the £200 billion mark for one month in May.

The current shortfall represents a dramatic turnaround from the collective £13 billion surplus the schemes had in June last year, according to pensions safety net the Pension Protection Fund.

Pension schemes have faced a double whammy of falling asset values and rising liabilities during the past year. The cost of their liabilities to members has soared by 21% during the past 12 months due to lower gilt yields. At the same time, falling equity markets have slashed the value of the schemes' assets by 5.5%.

A total of 6,461 pension schemes now face a funding shortfall, representing 88% of all defined benefit schemes.

Hat tip naked capitalism

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char

A prominent Russian human rights campaigner who worked to expose government-backed kidnappings in Chechnya is believed to have been murdered after being kidnapped herself there on Wednesday, Russian investigators said.

The investigators said they believed they had located the body of the woman, Natalia Estemirova, an employee with the Russian human rights group Memorial, according to a statement by the prosecutor general's investigative wing. The body, found in neighboring Ingushetia, had gunshots to the head and chest. Ms. Estemirova's passport was found at the scene.

[...]

Ms. Estemirova worked for years helping families uncover details about kidnapped relatives. She was the recipient of several international awards, and in 2007 was the first to win the Anna Politkovskaya Award, named for the Russian investigative journalist, who also worked to uncover abuses in Chechnya before she was shot to death in October 2006.

Italy's centre-right government on Wednesday proposed a tax amnesty aimed at repatriating billions of euros - the bulk believed to be held in Swiss bank accounts - on the most favourable terms yet offered to tax evaders by a European Union member state.

The amnesty will be the third offered by Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right government following packages in 2001 and 2003, which brought €46bn back to Italy and earned the government €2.1bn in revenues.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission on Friday will present several changes to the use of regional policy funds, but these will not include an expected extension of the use of money from 2007, with Spain set to lose hundreds of millions of euros.

The phrase Spaniards do not want to hear these days is that their country "faces the risk of decommitment," meaning it could lose considerable amounts of its multi-billion EU regional aid by the end of this year.

Valencia: Spanish cities and regions could lose important sums of EU aid by the end of the year

Under present EU funding rules, which were strengthened in 2007 to prevent fraud and irregularities, member states have to get their national and regional frameworks for EU projects pre-audited and cross-checked by the European Commission, before any actual payments can be made. A small part of funding is given in advance, but most of it comes on a reimbursement basis.

Spain now risks losing hundreds of millions because most of its framework programmes have not been approved yet and claims for 2007 can only be submitted for reimbursement by 31 December 2009. The total amount Spain could claim for 2007 is €6.3 billion.

Unemployment has soared to almost 2.4 million after a record number of people joined the ranks of people out of work, grim new figures showed today.

The figure rose by 281,000 in the three months to May, the biggest quarterly increase on record, taking the total to 2.38 million, the highest since 1995.

The number of people claiming jobseeker's allowance increased by 23,800 in June to 1.56 million, the worst total since Labour came to power in 1997.

The so-called claimant count has now increased for 16 months in a row and is over 700,000 higher than a year ago.

As Germany prepares to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the country's leading labor organizations has concluded that people living in the former East Germany are still hounded by poverty much more than their compatriots in the west.

Germans living in the areas of the country that once belonged to the former East Germany are twice as likely to face poverty, according to the German Confederation of Trade Unions (DGB), one of the country's leading labor unions.

A soup kitchen in Berlin's Pankow district. In Wednesday's edition of the Leipziger Volkszeitung daily, DGB labor market expert Wilhelm Adamy estimated the differences between the former East and West Germanies in terms of the percentage of working-age individuals who are dependent upon benefits they receive under the controversial Hartz IV welfare program. For the former West Germany, Adamy put the figure at 7.4 percent; for the east, at 16.4 percent.

Since reforms introduced by the government of then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in 2005, anyone who loses their job in Germany is entitled to unemployment benefits paying a certain percentage of their former salary for between 12 and 18 months. If they have not found a new job by then, under the Hartz IV system, they are classified as long-term unemployed and receive €351 ($491) a month in government assistance as well as additional amounts for dependents and the cost of renting "suitable" housing.

Associated Press Writer= SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt (AP) — Cuba's president on Wednesday called for an international financial system that better takes into account developing countries interests, as the global recession captured the spotlight at a summit of non-aligned nations.

Raul Castro's remarks at the opening session of the two-day Non-Aligned Movement's meeting in this Red Sea resort were echoed by other leaders and build on earlier discussions among officials from the 118-nation grouping of mostly of African, Asian and Latin American nations.

"We demand the establishment of a new international financial and economic structure that relies on the participation of all countries," Castro said, ahead of handing over the movement's presidency to Egypt

In a bizarre legal battle, the Swedish energy giant Vattenfall has brought Germany before an international arbitration body. The case involves environmental restrictions on a coal-fired power plant in Hamburg and reveals a lot about the relationship between politics and industry.

In the early stages, the tone was still friendly enough. In a letter dated Nov. 22, 2007, Lars Göran Josefsson, the CEO of the Swedish energy giant Vattenfall, thanked Hamburg Mayor Ole von Beust for the "constructive talks." But the days of such niceties are now over.

In April, Vattenfall brought an action against the German government before the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), an institution of the World Bank group based in Washington, DC. The company is charging Germany with violating the Energy Charter Treaty.

The Federal Reserve reported:

Industrial production decreased 0.4 percent in June after having fallen 1.2 percent in May. For the second quarter as a whole, output fell at an annual rate of 11.6 percent, a more moderate contraction than in the first quarter, when output fell 19.1 percent. Manufacturing output moved down 0.6 percent in June, with declines at both durable and nondurable goods producers. ... The rate of capacity utilization for total industry declined in June to 68.0 percent, a level 12.9 percentage points below its average for 1972-2008. Prior to the current recession, the low over the history of this series, which begins in 1967, was 70.9 percent in December 1982.
emphasis added

Almost a year after A.I.G.'s collapse, despite a tidal wave of outrage, there still has been no clear explanation of what toppled the insurance giant. The author decides to ask the people involved--the silent, shell-shocked traders of the A.I.G. Financial Products unit--and finds that the story may have a villain, whose reign of terror over 400 employees brought the company, the U.S. economy, and the global financial system to their knees.

I got a tip from a friend Andrew about a sale of assets by Wells Fargo (WFC) which raises a number of interesting questions.  He sent me the following 14 July article from the Milwaukee Business Journal.

Wells Fargo sold $600 million in mostly non-performing subprime loans to Irvine, Calif.-based Arch Bay Capital, National Mortgage News reported, citing sources familiar with the sale.

The industry publication said the loans sold for 35 cents on the dollar, about double what most hedge funds were offering.

...
Finally, as the OC Register suggests, a 35 cents on the dollar bid means huge writedowns that banks do not want to take - especially banks still on government TARP life support like WFC.  To me, this explains very well why the PPIP program was a failure: if banks can sell distressed assets quietly over time to private bidders, they might be able to delay taking writedowns.  But, the price discovery involved in the PPIP program would be a blood bath for banks already capital-constrained.  This is why the program has failed.

The nation's largest public pension fund has filed suit in California state court in connection with $1 billion in losses that it says were caused by "wildly inaccurate" credit ratings from the three leading ratings agencies.
...
The lawsuit, filed late last week in California Superior Court in San Francisco, is focused on a form of debt called structured investment vehicles, highly complex packages of securities made up of a variety of assets, including subprime mortgages. Calpers bought $1.3 billion of them in 2006; they collapsed in 2007 and 2008.

Calpers maintains that in giving these packages of securities the agencies' highest credit rating, the three top ratings agencies -- Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poor's and Fitch -- "made negligent misrepresentation" to the pension fund, which provides retirement benefits to 1.6 million public employees in California.

The AAA ratings given by the agencies "proved to be wildly inaccurate and unreasonably high," according to the suit, which also said that the methods used by the rating agencies to assess these packages of securities "were seriously flawed in conception and incompetently applied."

The Big Picture: Calpers: Rating Agencies to Blame for Huge Losses

The goal of the litigation (as I see it) isn't to make the rating agencies pay a financial penalty; rather, it is to publicly try them just as the regulatory rules are being rewritten. I also predict that CALPERS is going to attempt to not just win, but humiliate these agencies, call them out in the most embarrassing way possible, trash the senior executives, and make things very uncomfortable in general for these firms.

They don't want them to merely suffer -- they want to destroy their unique position as an Oligopoly, to remove them from having a special status under the SEC rules.

The ugly facts are that there can be no durable recovery in the economy until the excess capacity is removed, since there are no huge productivity boosters on the horizon, the only other way you can grow demand (that is, you must boost not only GDP-per-capita but more importantly per-capita income so that true demand is generated) is to reduce the debt load in the system.

Trade continues to take a hammering during the continuing global economic slowdown.  The OECD reports today that on a year-on-year basis, growth in the value of exports and imports of goods and services in the G-7 countries plunged, by 27.1% for exports and by 27.9% for imports in the first quarter. The sharp drop observed in Q4 2008 continued in Q1 2009, albeit less steeply.

In both comparisons, goods fell much more sharply at about twice the rates than those of services, the overall trend for both goods and services being largely determined by the high share of goods in total trade.

Nick Rowe use California's IOUs and Canadian Tire money to illustrate possible outcomes when two currencies circulate side by side:

The State(s) Theory of Money: California and Canadian Tire, by Nick Rowe: I learn via [this] that there is a distinct chance that California will allow taxes to be paid in the new scrip it issued when it ran out of funds. I have no idea whether this will happen, or whether the Federal government will stop it. Let me just assume that it does happen, and that the Federal government does not stop it. I'm (almost) hoping that it does happen, and that the Fed doesn't stop it, because it would be such a fascinating experiment in monetary theory.

Beijing's foreign reserve holdings have surged through the $2,000 billion mark, as money pours back into China to take advantage of faster economic growth and rapidly inflating asset prices.

The flow of funds threatens to renew pressure for a revaluation of the renminbi at a time when the government and domestic business are focused on financial stability.
...
The quarterly figure far outstrips China's trade surplus and inbound foreign direct investment for the same period, proof that the accumulation of funds inside the country is being driven by other factors.

The Obama administration will on Wednesday unveil draft legislation that will require all US hedge funds with more than $30m in assets under management to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The move ends decades of hedge fund independence from regulatory oversight in the US and will include more stringent measures than had been expected by many in the alternative investment industry - including "quite tough" capital requirements to stop large funds "gambling with their size".

The Economy Is Even Worse Than You Think

The Bureau of Labor Statistics preliminary estimate for job losses for June is 467,000, which means 7.2 million people have lost their jobs since the start of the recession. The cumulative job losses over the last six months have been greater than for any other half year period since World War II, including the military demobilization after the war. The job losses are also now equal to the net job gains over the previous nine years, making this the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all job growth from the previous expansion.

Here are 10 reasons we are in even more trouble than the 9.5% unemployment rate indicates:

The article is mostly on target, except for still a bit too much reverence to Common Wisdom on one topic, not even noticing the glaring contradictions in the process...:

How could this happen when Washington has thrown trillions of dollars into the pot, including the famous $787 billion in stimulus spending that was supposed to yield $1.50 in growth for every dollar spent? For a start, too much of the money went to transfer payments such as Medicaid, jobless benefits and the like that do nothing for jobs and growth. The spending that creates new jobs is new spending, particularly on infrastructure. It amounts to less than 10% of the stimulus package today.

(...)

As paychecks shrink and disappear, consumers are more hesitant to spend and won't lead the economy out of the doldrums quickly enough.

(...)

Since consumer spending is the economy's main driver, we are going to have a weak consumer sector and many businesses simply won't have the means or the need to hire employees.

(...)

This time, the combination of a weak job picture and a severe credit crunch means that people won't be able to get the financing for big expenditures, and those who can borrow will be reluctant to do so. The paycheck has returned as the primary source of spending.

(we're back to paychecks, ie real income, as the basis of the economy, but transfers to the poor are inefficient... sigh.)

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

A Tale of Two Bailouts
Goldman's profits, CIT's trouble, and 'too big to fail.'

Yesterday saw one TARP recipient, Goldman Sachs, report $3.44 billion in profits even as another, CIT, teeters on the edge of either bankruptcy or another taxpayer bailout. Which way CIT will tip remained unclear as we went to press, but its very plight shows how the government's approach to systemic risk has created groups of financial "haves" and "have nots."

What the Goldmans of the world have in addition to profits is the widespread belief that they are too big to fail. Both Goldman and CIT converted into bank holding companies at the height of the financial panic last fall, which made them eligible for TARP injections. Goldman also benefited at a crucial moment from the Federal Reserve takeover of AIG, and it received the additional filip of FDIC-guaranteed debt issuance through the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program. CIT was excluded from the latter program on grounds that it didn't pose a systemic risk, even as larger competitors like General Electric were allowed in.

(...)

But if CIT -- a company one-tenth the size of Lehman Brothers -- can be bailed out long after the panic has passed, the word "systemic" has lost all meaning.

(...)

Of course, if the feds do let CIT fail, this will only confirm that the only certain survivors in the current market are banks big enough that the government figures it must bail them out. Just ask the many small banks that have been rolled up by the FDIC at a rate of two a week since the beginning of the year, with eight so far in July alone. That can only strengthen the likes of Goldman, which apparently needs no help printing money anyway.

(...)

Goldman will surely deny that its risk-taking is subsidized by the taxpayer -- but then so did Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, right up to the bitter end. An implicit government guarantee is only free until it's not, and when the bill comes due it tends to be huge. So for the moment, Goldman Sachs -- or should we say Goldie Mac? -- enjoys the best of both worlds: outsize profits for its traders and shareholders and a taxpayer backstop should anything go wrong.

We like profits as much as the next capitalist. But when those profits are supported by government guarantees or insured deposits, taxpayers have a special interest in how the companies conduct their business. Ideally we would shed those implicit guarantees altogether, along with the very notion of too big to fail. But that is all but impossible now and for the foreseeable future. Even if the Obama Administration and Fed were to declare with one voice that banks such as Goldman were on their own, no one would believe it.

(in the WSJ...)

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

As I predicted last March, American banks are hoarding rather than divesting the so-called toxic assets. The volume of trading in non-agency mortgage backed securities is considerably lower than many traders might have expected.

That makes the stabilization of asset prices along with the stabilization of bank equity prices a self-referential argument: asset prices are doing well because banks (and other financial institutions) are buying them, and that reassures the equity market.

Rather than relying on distressed investors to bail them out, banks ARE the main distressed investors. After the suspension of FAS 157 banks have an incentive to hold rather than sell securities trading at low dollar prices.

The toxic waste never came out. The zombies are living quite happily on it. The banks will continue to tip back and forth between credit losses and elevated income from their distressed portfolios.

Reuters has  calculated  that the average salary for nearly 30,000 employees of Goldman Sachs (GS) this year will be $1 million.

   NEW YORK, July 14 (Reuters) - The average Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS) employee is within striking distance of $1 million in compensation and benefits this year, just nine months after the bank received a $10 billion U.S. government bailout.

-Skip-

Just a few other pertinent factors to consider:

1. The stock has tripled since late last year.
   
2. Bullish forecasters are calling for it to surpass its historic high above $250 per share within a year or so.
   
3. Goldman's access and influence within the US Administration is without equal.
   
4. Goldman envy is rife amongst finance professionals, no matter how much they protest about its privileged position.
   
5. Hatred of Government Sachs is rife in the blogosphere.
   
6. Goldman can make more in a nano-second than most people would earn in several lifetimes.
   
7. All asset classes are traded by the firm and they can flip from being long to short (or both) and back faster than it took the folks at Bear and Lehman to clean out their desks.
   
8. It is hard to imagine a scenario in which Goldman wouldn't survive a financial Armageddon but where its principal client, the US Treasury, would.
   
9. If you believe in buy and hold, and like to buy dips, this seems like the right place to be looking when the baby's being thrown out with the bathwater.
   
10. Warren Buffett is extraordinarily enthusiastic about the company.

It's hard to resist the conclusion that if you can't beat them then you simply have to join them.  Not literally of course....But one can of course get a piece of the action by hitching a ride with the stock.
So, even if the thought of making a million dollars this year seems like a remote fantasy a program of gradual and judicious accumulation seems like a no-brainer.

Who knows, one day the smart folks at Goldman will probably figure out how to do a reverse takeover of the global financial system, and for those who bought the stock while it was still cheap, that could really add sizzle to their retirement plans.  (My bold.)

As long ago as 1997 market commentators said the importance of the North Sea to world oil markets outweighed its contribution to world oil supply. Boosted volume in the benchmark complex has kept that relevance strong but, with the grade that started it all hitting a new output low, it seems Dated Brent/BFOE might soon be due another change.

It is currently estimated that over 65% of the world's daily physical oil is priced off Dated Brent/BFOE, giving this production complex of 1.5 million b/d production a huge responsibility.

Israel has claimed that everything was done to protect innocent lives during its recent military operation in the Gaza Strip. But according to statements from Israeli soldiers there were malicious acts of destruction, white phosphorus was used and civilians were deliberately targeted.

The report is an account of acts of brutality. The Israeli human rights organization Breaking the Silence spent several months interviewing veterans of the Gaza war that took place in January of this year. The responses by 54 of the veterans paint a completely different picture of Israel's campaign against the Islamist organization Hamas from that provided by the Israeli military leadership. According to the report, the commanders hammered it into their soldiers that they were not to show any consideration for the Palestinian civilian population, so as not to risk the lives of Israeli troops.

 In this Jan. 16 photo, a Palestinian man inspects his burnt-out home in Gaza City after it was hit by Israeli tanks. The statements by reservists, conscripts, soldiers and officers, which are consistent with and reinforce each other, substantiate for the first time the suspicion that the Israeli military in many cases ignored one of the basic tenets of the international laws of war: the distinction between combatants and innocent bystanders. The three-week war claimed the lives of about 1,400 Palestinians, many if not most of them civilians.

According to the report by Breaking the Silence, Hamas's cynical conduct of war can no longer be solely blamed for the large number of civilian casualties. The Islamists deployed their fighters in densely populated areas, making it difficult for the Israelis to distinguish between Hamas soldiers and civilians. Many of the wounded and dead are clearly the result of a lesson Israel learned in the Lebanon war of 2006: no hesitation, no scruples.

When First Lt. James Brown and his team of bomb investigators arrived at the shredded remains of the truck, the grim significance of the attack became clear. One of the dead was a hard-charging commander who, more than any officer in this restive district of Logar Province, had helped fight a shadowy network of local bomb makers.

"If he wasn't trying so hard, if he was taking bribes, taking naps, he'd be alive right now," Lieutenant Brown said of the commander, Gul Alam.

This is the war in Afghanistan today, where death is measured less by the accuracy of bullets than by the cleverness of bombs. And though the Afghan insurgency's improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.'s, are less powerful or complex than those used in Iraq, they are becoming more common and more sophisticated with each week, American military officers say.

Al-Qaeda has issued its first threat against China with a vow to attack Chinese workers in North Africa in retaliation for Beijing's treatment of Muslim Uighurs.

The threat, issued by the Algeria-based al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), highlights the risks faced by China as it expands its economic investments overseas.

"Although AQIM appear to be the first arm of al-Qaeda to officially state they will target Chinese interests, others are likely to follow," an intelligence report from Stirling Assynt, a London-based risk analysis firm, says.

The warning followed deadly unrest in China's westernmost region of Xinjiang last week, when 184 people died and 1,680 were injured -- most of them Han Chinese killed by Uighurs.

^{Infrastructure spending rose during boom times but failed to trickle down to the roadways partly due to graft. The abysmal network has become a drag on the economy and a horror story for truckers.}

By Megan K. Stack, Los Angeles Times

Over the last decade, as Vladimir V. Putin presided over an oil-rich, newly assertive nation, outside observers marveled at Russia's resurgence. But daily life inside the would-be superpower is still strained by mundane, fundamental failures.

As anybody who has tried to explore the country by car can testify, Russia's abysmal road infrastructure is perhaps the most pointed reminder of all the things left undone during long years of economic boom.

Outside the major cities, the roads are harrowing -- narrow and perilously pitted with potholes; groaning with cargo trucks; edges dropping off abruptly onto earth without a shoulder.

Even fresh pavement often ripples in waves, which are often coated with winter ice, sending tires skidding back and forth. And in many parts of Russia, the roads are simply unpaved.

Although spending on infrastructure has tripled over the last few years, drivers and experts agree that the cash has failed to trickle down meaningfully to the roadways, partly because it got snared in local corruption.

And now, with the GDP shrinking and the International Monetary Fund predicting zero economic growth in 2010, there is a growing fear that Russia may have squandered its best chance to reinvent itself.

Chocolate is just as much a part of Switzerland as the Alps. Now, global market leader Barry Callebaut has developed the product that competitors have been hopelessly puzzling over for 60 years -- chocolate that doesn't melt and is low in calories.

Serious mountain climbers know the problem all too well: Packing chocolate in your rucksack only ends in frustration when you reach the summit. If you're walking in freezing cold temperatures, the chocolate bar becomes a rock-hard block that's impossible to bite into without breaking your teeth. But, then again, if the sun is beating down, it won't take long before the chocolate melts into a gooey mess. In the worst-case scenario, you reach the mountain top, finally at your destination, and it's completely liquified.

A not-so-guilty pleasure? Reduced-calorie chocolate that doesn't melt in your hands is set to hit the shops in the next two years. And even if the temperature is just right, there's still the problem of weight gain. As most of us have finally realized, chocolate is not one of the staple foods of the skinny minnie.

But one Swiss chocolate manufacturer thinks its has a solution that could make these problems a thing of the past. Barry Callebaut, whose output of over 1.1 million tons of cocoa and chocolate products makes him the world's largest producer of chocolate, has discovered a type of chocolate with completely new properties. According to the company's head developer, Hans Vriens, the chocolate has up to 90 percent fewer calories than regular chocolate.

Officials in the German state of Lower Saxony have detected trace amounts of radioactive material in the nuclear waste storage site at Asse. The facility has come under fire in the past. 

German safety officials are again looking into the storage of radioactive material in the German state of Lower Saxony after finding that there has been a seepage of nuclear waste in the former salt mine storage facilities in Asse II.

 

Traces of tritium and cesium 137 were found in the old salt mine shaft where the nuclear waste is stored some 950 meters (3,117 feet) below the ground, officials said.

 

Measures to contain the leak and protect Asse staff were being taken and the levels of contamination found were below acceptable limits, according to Germany's Federal Office for Radiation Protection.

Head of World Health Organisation casts doubt on government's claim that first stocks will arrive in August

Vaccines to protect millions of Britons from swine flu will not be available for several months, the head of the World Health Organisation warns today.

Her remarks, in an interview with the Guardian, cast serious doubt on ministerial claims in parliament that the first stocks would arrive in August.

Dr Margaret Chan, WHO director general, said: "There's no vaccine. One should be available soon, in August. But having a vaccine available is not the same as having a vaccine that has been proven safe. Clinical trial data will not be available for another two to three months."

Horst Koehler Tuesday became the first German president to take part in the annual military parade to mark the Bastille Day celebrations in France. A day earlier, more than 300 cars were set on fire in riots in Paris. 

Along with Koehler, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was invited as a special guest for the annual military parade in Paris.

The parade is one of the grand occasions in the French calendar and marks the storming of the Bastille fortress in 1789, traditionally seen as the start of the French revolution.

Ceremoniously-dressed Indian troops and German soldiers marched down the Champs Elysees along with some of France's most modern military units while jets flew in formation overhead.

Built by Italian engineers in the 19th century, the Diakofto Kalavrita Railway has been revamped in the past two years. Greece has spent millions upgrading the service to boost tourism in a region with a bitter history. 

The little train screeches and strains on its journey, rocking as passengers lean out of the windows to photograph the cascading white waters of the Vouraikos River. They quickly duck back in to avoid smashing their cameras and heads into rock faces almost close enough to scrape the paintwork.

 

For two years, the narrow-gauge railway linking the seaside town of Diakopto, next to the Gulf of Corinth, to Kalavrita, high in the Helmos Mountain range, has been silent. But now, the tracks are rattling again after the Hellenic Railway Organization spent 40 million euros ($55 million) upgrading one of the most spectacular lines in Europe.

 

The living embodiment of the children's story "The Little Engine That Could" is back.

Via Despair.com's blog, comes this brilliantly insightful look into social media:

At a State Department townhall conducted by Secretary Clinton, a staffer asked why Internet Explorer is mandated, even though Firefox is security-approved for the "entire intelligence community." The answer? A whole lot of bullshit, especially the insane citing of "expense."

Internet Explorer isn't mandated in every governmental department, and Firefox has been vetted and cleared as just as secure as IE (duh), so it's a legitimate question: Why not use the faster, safer, more customizable and more reliable browser? Clinton has no idea why Firefox is barred, which is totally fine with us--we really are happy she's spending her time on other things.

The $65bn fraudster is moved to Atlanta jail where man who gave his name to scam served out his time.

Convicted fraudster Bernard Madoff has been transferred to the same prison which once held legendary swindler Charles Ponzi.

Madoff, who was last month sentenced to 150 years after admitting to orchestrating a $65bn (£40bn) fraud, has been moved to the US Penitentiary in Atlanta.

A man in the United States popped out to his local petrol station to buy a pack of cigarettes - only to find his card charged $23,148,855,308,184,500.

That is $23 quadrillion (£14 quadrillion) - many times the US national debt.

"I thought somebody had bought Europe with my credit card," said Josh Muszynski, from New Hampshire.

He says his appeals to his bank first met with little understanding, though it eventually corrected the error.

It also waived the usual $15 overdraft fee.