Twenty links inside.
Christina Livingston, a supporter of people who had lost their homes to foreclosure, or have been battling banks over loan modification, reacts to cheers from fellow protesters as she is arrested outside a Chase bank branch in downtown Los Angeles Thursday, Dec. 16, 2010. Police arrested 22 protesters who blocked the doors to the bank in acts of civil disobedience. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
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RBS defies calls for bonus restraint
Investment bankers at the bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland are in line to land £1billion in bonuses in defiance of increasingly frantic Government demands for restraint.
Business Secretary Vince Cable yesterday issued the first explicit threat from the Coalition of a new supertax on ‘scandalous’ City handouts.
It came amid mounting concern in Whitehall at plans by the leading banks to pay out a total of up to £7billion in the next few weeks.
Mr Cable threatened new transparency rules if the banks refused to put their own house in order – describing the bonus culture as a ‘poisonous fungus’ that has been allowed to flourish ‘in the dark’. He also said he wanted the biggest financial institutions broken up.
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European Nations Violating Deficit Caps May Face Fines Up to 0.5% of GDP
Euro-area governments may under European Commission proposals be fined as much as 0.5 percent of their countries’ gross domestic product if they ignore recommendations to fix economic imbalances, European Union President Herman Van Rompuy said.
The commission “will develop a number of indicators that show if a country gets into problems economically,” and “we’ll check that for the first time in March,” Van Rompuy said in an interview in Dutch on the television program “Buitenhof” today. Any country that ignores a recommendation to correct those problems will be punished “immediately,” he said.
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France's AAA Grade at Risk as Rating Cuts Spread
France risks losing its top AAA grade as Europe’s debt crisis prompts a wave of downgrades that threatens to engulf the region’s highest-rated borrowers, with Belgium also facing a possible cut, analysts and investors said.
Moody’s Investors Service said Dec. 15 it may lower Spain’s rating, citing “substantial funding requirements,” and slashed Ireland’s rating by five levels on Dec. 17. Standard & Poor’s is reviewing its assessments of Ireland, Portugal and Greece. Credit default swaps show it’s more expensive to insure Belgian, French and Austrian bonds than lower-rated securities from Chile and the Czech Republic.
“Every sovereign may get penalized in the year ahead,” said Toby Nangle, who helps oversee $46 billion as director of asset allocation at Baring Asset Management in London. “It would a big deal if France was to have its AAA rating stripped. I don’t think the likelihood of a downgrade is reflected in the market.”
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Moody's slashes Irish debt to 3 grades above junk
DUBLIN (AP) — Moody's slashed Ireland's credit rating five notches on Friday and warned of further downgrades if the country cannot regain command of its debts and tame its deficit.
Dietmar Hornung, the senior Ireland analyst for Moody's, said it remained an open question whether Ireland could sharply reduce its deficit from its eurozone-record levels while taking tens of billions from a new EU-IMF bailout fund.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/17/moodys-slashes-irish-debt-3-grades-above-junk/
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Soros Gold Bubble at $1,384 as Miners Push Buttons
James Burton didn’t have a penny invested in gold of the $142.8 billion he managed as chief executive officer of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System in 2002. Why would he? The metal had been in a bear market for two decades.
Yet shortly after announcing his retirement from the largest public pension fund in the U.S., Burton agreed to fly to London to entertain a job offer from a mining companies trade group he had never heard of. Squishing across a rain-soaked British golf course in rented shoes in early June 2002, he listened to what sounded like a far-fetched idea: Selling gold as an investment to the masses.
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22 arrested in LA foreclosure protest at Chase
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Police arrested 22 demonstrators who blocked entry to a downtown Chase bank branch Thursday to protest what they said were unfair home foreclosures.
http://www.omaha.com/article/20101216/AP05/312169762
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Billionaires On the Warpath
Say what you will about Bernie Sanders. During his Senate "filibuster" on Friday, the gentleman from Vermont asked a good question: When is enough enough?
The object of Mr. Sanders's ire was the deal between the White House and Republicans that will keep the Bush tax cuts in place. "The billionaires of America are on the warpath," was his explanation. "They want more and more and more."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703727804576017851441620350.html
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SPECIAL REPORT: More Than 1000 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims - Challenge UN IPCC & Gore
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Payrolls Drop in 28 U.S. States, Joblessness Rises in 21
Payrolls decreased in 28 U.S. states and the unemployment rate climbed in 21, showing most parts of the world’s largest economy took part in the November labor-market setback.
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Flashback - Der Spiegel 1974 - New Ice Age Approaching - Odds Of A Warm Future “At Best 1 in 10,000″
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EU shuts off twitter television screens after Berlusconi insults
The tweets appeared in huge letters on giant television screen in the summit press areas and in rooms used by passing diplomats and politicians.
"Berlusconi pays for sex, for votes, for mafia protection, for everything he can buy. What he cannot buy, will be stolen," sent tanzeron.
The remainder of the links are in comments below...
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