“Lava actually…”

“Lava actually…” It’s the day when I suspect that someone isn’t quite ready to listen me yet. Some ‘structure’ which actually make me to be correct. The hunches of this morning are telling me that preceded moments of deep doubt, and intense anxiety is actually of somebody’s medvedev rats who want the narrator pay a lip service (like this night for example) and then, to loose (i.e. by me) the very fortunate “coincidences”. This heavy (but incognito) beating of nobody’s poodle, or any other lapdog for that matter, make me “describe” the acts of courage much easier than to carry out? (What you think). You know what? With this large business project, which still involve all my attention, I see a lot of unexpected and generous sources pop-upping all around me. Which can be a waste (Such a shame! If was without your Mir cut), - if I don’t use it wisely. Well man, it’s one of risks isn’t it? In other side, if I’m a well trained enough (to sit where I’m before ask for permission), - not the time and judicious mood to make a major move? You see the CoL culture, - the every aspects in my life in your eyes is should (mean fare) to be vice-verse. Isn’t it?

The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe was an institution aimed at strengthening peace, democracy, human rights and economy in the countries of South Eastern Europe from 1999-2008. It was replaced by the Regional Co-operation Council in February 2008. The RCC replaced the Stability Pact because it is more "regionally owned" than the SP, which was driven more by outside partners such as the EU. The RCC includes states like Turkey and Ukraine that are outside any reasonable definition of south-eastern Europe (being Asia or Eastern Europe respectively). The states encompassed by the Stability Pact are those in the Balkan group (with all of Serbia and Croatia), plus Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania, but excluding Greece (which would have been a natural member had it not been a member of the EU), and Kosova (another natural member which was not independent at the time). The countries included were: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia.

Father Stabbed To Death On Council Estate. Wednesday, April 21 10:51 am. © Sky News 2010
A young father-of-one has been stabbed to death in a fight on a "rough" council estate after a gang apparently tormented a householder and urinated through his front door. Anthony Kershaw, 25, was killed after arguing with a 52-year-old man in Great Howarth, Rochdale, Greater Manchester. The householder had apparently called police because of nuisance behaviour outside his ground-floor flat.
Police were first alerted just after midnight and paramedics took Mr Kershaw to hospital but he died at 10.50am on Tuesday. "The whole estate is rough - just look at it. The council need to sort it out but they don't bother." Anyone with information should call police on 0161 856 5860 or call the independent charity Crimestoppers, anonymously on 0800 555 111.

State must sell 10% of EDP in the next 12 months. Analysis. 21/04/10 10:45. JPMorgan analysts believe that the state will sell nearly half its position in the EDP, because of the SGP. "The Portuguese State holds 20.5% of EDP by PARPUBLICA and 5% by Caixa Geral de Depósitos and we would not be surprised if the government ceded 10% of EDP in the next 12 months," reads a note from the bank's analysis U.S., noting that the SGP (i.e. Stability and Growing Pact) provides raise revenue privatizations totaling 6 billion euros. At current market prices, 10% of EDP are valued at one billion euros, about 18% of the 'cake' of six billion. Said to be less likely in view of JPMorgan, is the sale of the 6.8% who still holds the power Iberdola led by Antonio Mexia. Analysts Laitung Javier Garrido and Sarah have a recommendation to 'overweight' for EDP. The shares of EDP today reported losses of 1.11% to 2.93 million (see graph).

George Irvin*
Balanced budgets: David v Goliath? Monsieur Mer’s announcement that France would remain in breach of the 3 percent budget deficit ceiling in 2004 followed by Herr Eichel’s admission that Germany would do the same drives one more nail into the coffin of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). The debate in Brussels has taken on curious a David-and-Goliath hue. Much of the financial press seems to have cast the rule-breakers---France and Germany---as the villains while the smaller countries wanting to stick to the rules---Austria and the Netherlands---are portrayed as the good guys. In truth, it’s the other way ‘round! The European Commission, which this week forecast EU-15 unemployment in 2004 to rise above the July 2003 level of 8.1 percent, appears to have lost the plot! Quite rightly, France and Germany refuse the SGP cap on fiscal spending and risk prolonging Europe’s recession. In the 1990s, proponents of the ‘new economy’ claimed that recessions were a thing of the past. Then the bubble burst! The US headline budget deficit is current approaching 5% and the economy is showing renewed signs of life with no threat of inflation; for that matter, so too is Japan where the deficit is 9 percent! There is nothing sacrosanct about 3%. All market economies are prone to recurrent business cycles. Advanced economies have built in stabilisers; when national income grows quickly, progressive taxes take a fatter bite from rising income and budget surplus results. When National Income is falling, Government spending on things like unemployment benefit rises while tax receipts fall: a budget deficit results. A budget deficit boosts aggregate demand, thus facilitating renewed economic growth. France’s forecast 2004 GDP is barely growing while Germany’s will not grow at all. In truth, both countries should be increasing, not decreasing, their budget deficits. The 1997 SGP, passed to give teeth to the Maastricht Treaty rules and convince financial markets that countries like Italy and Spain would be financially responsible, set the deficit limit to 3 percent of GDP. There is nothing scientific or sacrosanct about this number. Three percent was merely though to be a number financial markets could live with irrespective of whether it referred to the headline or the core budget deficit, or of the depth of recession or even the imminent threat of inflation. Market fundamentalism. In reality, the real debate over the SGP is between those who believe in active government and Keynesian counter-cyclical fiscal policy, and those who believe in minimal government and market fundamentalism. The David-and-Goliath metaphor simply does not fit the Dutch and Austrian cases. Both the Dutch and Austrian Finance Ministers are from centre-right parties. Gerrit Zalm was in 2002 the Chairman of the Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD) and Karl-Heinz Grasser is an ex-General Secretary of the Freiheitlichen Partei Österreichs (FPO). Mhr Zalm, as Finance Minister in the second Balkenende Government (and in the earlier ‘purple coalition’), has recently presided over a drastic dismantling of once-proud Dutch welfare system while his Austrian counterpart’s Party has broadly similar aims. The Washington Consensus and the EU. Conservative economists like balanced budgets as much as they dislike Keynes. Keynesianism became the dominant paradigm in the US and Europe after the Great Depression and remained so until the Reagan-Thatcher years. It was only in the 1980s that monetarism gained ascendancy, both in Anglo-Saxon circles and also in the main international financial agencies: the IMF and (to a lesser degree) the World Bank. It was the American economist John Williamson who in 1990 coined the phrase ‘the Washington consensus’ to summarise the economic prescriptions of market fundamentalism, or what is sometimes called neo-liberalism. Cuts in social spending, budgetary austerity, privatisation of public services; supply side reform of labour markets: all are well-known menu items of the ‘Wahington consensus’. In the past decade, the IMF imposed a combination of liberalisation and extreme fiscal austerity on a variety of Third World countries including Mexico, Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, Brazil and most recently Argentina. The main aim of such programmes has been to restore countries’ ‘credibility’ with international financial markets enabling them to repay overseas debt. The results of fiscal austerity have been to foster disastrous recessions and cause unemployment in the name of ‘sound public finance.’ Arguments over reform of the SGP must be placed in the context of a globalisation debate in which economic ideologies and the policies they beget are fiercely contested. The simplistic David-and-Goliath metaphor applied to EU member states serves more to obscure than to enlighten. If there is a Goliath to be tamed, it is today’s huge and highly volatile capital markets and the conservative economic doctrine that serves them. In reality, the underlying issue is whether Europe’s unique model of the ‘social market’ economy can be preserved, albeit with some modifications, or whether it is to be replaced by a US model of free-market capitalism, promoted on a world basis by IMF-style othodoxy.

Russian elite pining for volcano-halted oysters. Wed Apr 21, 2010 10:23am BST. MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's super rich are lamenting a shortage of oysters and peaches, whose deliveries have been cut by the Icelandic volcano which caused air traffic chaos in Europe, a popular daily reported on Wednesday. Exorbitantly priced seafood and fruits from Spain, France and Italy, regularly lapped up by the Moscow elite, are missing from the Russian capital's most glistening stores, Komsomolskaya Pravda said on its front page. One worker in a luxury shop on the outskirts of Moscow said oysters, which stay fresh for 10 days, will be missing from parties this Saturday. "If will be dreadful if they don't make it," he told the paper. Imported Spanish peaches that fetch 1,250 roubles ($43) a kilo have been replaced by much cheaper apricots from ex-Soviet Azerbaijan, but the moneyed Russians have been turning their noses up at them.