News. Analysis. Opinions.
Article authored by Michael Birnbaum and appeared in The Washington Post.
LUDWIGSHAFEN, Germany — The sprawling chemical plant in this city along the Rhine River has been a jewel of Germany’s manufacturing-led economy for more than a century. But the plunging price of natural gas in the United States has European companies setting sail across the Atlantic to stay competitive. [Read more...]
Article authored by Bruno Waterfield and appeared in The Telegraph. Article is courtesy of telegraph.co.uk
Savings accounts in Spain, Italy and other European countries will be raided if needed to preserve Europe’s single currency by propping up failing banks, a senior eurozone official has announced.
The new policy will alarm hundreds of thousands of British expatriates who live and have transferred their savings, proceeds from house sales and other assets to eurozone bank accounts in countries such as France, Spain and Italy. [Read more...]
Germany accused of ‘deporting’ its elderly: Rising numbers moved to Asia and Eastern Europe because of sky-high care costs
*Country’s elderly and sick being sent abroad due to rising care costs
*Situation described as ‘inhumane deportation’ and a huge ‘alarm signal’
*Warning to Britain where pensioners are selling homes to pay for healthcare
German pensioners are being sent to care homes in Eastern Europe and Asia in what has been described as an ‘inhumane deportation’.
Rising numbers of the elderly and sick are moved overseas for long-term care because of sky-high costs at home.
Some private healthcare providers are even building homes overseas, while state insurers are also investigating whether they can care for their clients abroad. [Read more...]
Article authored by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and appeared in The Telegraph. Article is courtesy of telegraph.co.uk
The strategy of triple-barrelled contraction across a string of inter-linked countries has been the greatest policy debacle since the early 1930s. The outcome over the last three years has been worse than forecast at every stage, and in every key respect.
The eurozone has crashed back into double-dip recession. It will contract a further 0.3pc next year, according to a chastened European Central Bank. The ECB omitted mention of its own role in this fiasco by allowing all key measures of the money supply to stall in mid-2012, with the time-honoured consequences six months to a year later. [Read more...]
Article authored by Bruno Waterfield and appeared on The Telegraph. Article is courtesy of telegraph.co.uk
Amsterdam is to create “Scum villages” where nuisance neighbours and anti-social tenants will be exiled from the city and rehoused in caravans or containers with “minimal services” under constant police supervision.
Holland’s capital already has a special hit squad of municipal officials to identify the worst offenders for a compulsory six month course in how to behave.
Social housing problem families or tenants who do not show an improvement or refuse to go to the special units face eviction and homelessness.
Eberhard van der Laan, Amsterdam’s Labour mayor, has tabled the £810,000 plan to tackle 13,000 complaints of anti-social behaviour every year. He complained that long-term harassment often leads to law abiding tenants, rather than their nuisance neighbours, being driven out. [Read more...]
Article authored Clyde Prestowitz and appeared on Foreign Policy. Article is couresy of foreignpolicy.com
All my life I’ve been a Europhile. My dad worked for a Belgian company. I was a high school exchange student to Switzerland in 1958. My first posting as a Foreign Service officer was as vice consul to Rotterdam. I lived in Brussels for five years in the 1970s as head of Scott Paper Company’s European marketing operations. I take my family to Europe frequently and maintain a wide range of work and other activities there.
Through all the vicissitudes of mid-night negotiations, I admired the dedication and vision of the negotiators who were building the European Union. I believed in the vision of a united Europe and welcomed the advent of the Euro as a major step along the way. When the recent crisis first broke three years ago, I welcomed it, thinking that surely it would be a catalyst for Europe to move to full financial integration and to greater political integration on the way toward realizing the vision of a truly united Europe. [Read more...]
Article authored by Robert Winnett and appeared on The Telegraph. Article is courtesy of telegraph.co.uk
Up to two million people are to have their credit files secretly checked under a crackdown on tax evasion to be unveiled by George Osborne to help raise another £10 billion.
Credit reference agencies will cross-check details of the income people declare on their tax returns against their spending patterns to identify “high” and “medium” risks of both illegal and legal tax avoidance.
People identified to HM Revenue and Customs will then be subject to more detailed investigations. About two million people are expected to be scrutinised under the programme, which may lead to privacy concerns. [Read more...]
I was reading an online discussion thread the other night and the “conversation” was the usual Europe vs. the United States heated exchange. Basically, most of the European commenter’s were assailing the U.S. as the most aggressive and war-like nation in history and blaming us for everything that ails the world.
A few of the American’s in the debate did a good job in trying to set the record straight, but it was clear that the European commenter’s were not interested in facts…just vitriol.
Some Americans pointed out that in fact, European nations have been responsible for more wars than any others, with specific focus on WWI and WWII. The European’s were having none of it – according to their thinking, that was “in the past” and that they’ve “grown and learned from their past.” Apparently, we Americans are barbaric and we have not learned…most referencing the Korean War, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq as their basis for labeling us war mongers.
Really?
So WWI and WWII are in the past, so they don’t count? The Korean War lasted from 1950 – 1953 (note that WWII had only ended in 1945). I guess to the thinking of some Europeans, 1945 is the year of enlightenment and counts as “the past” and anything post 1945 is fair game for them? [Read more...]
Article authored by Julia Gronnevet and Karl Ritter on AP News. Article is courtesy of AP News. [learn more about The AP]
OSLO, Norway (AP) – The European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for promoting peace and democracy in Europe – an honor that came as 27-nation bloc was struggling with its biggest crisis since it was created in the 1950s.
The Norwegian prize committee said the EU was being honored Friday for six decades of contributions “to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.” [Read more...]
What people are reading on Headline Digest right now