Europe's Most (And Least) Affordable Cities according to the European Backpacker Index For 2014

Almere City Lake - the Netherlands

The European Backpacker Index for 2014 ,published last week, rates 51 major European cities by price and was designed to assist budget-minded consumers plan and compare destinations “at a glance.”

“Parts of Europe are still amazing bargains from a global standpoint,” Roger Wade, founder of Price of Travel, a website that helps travelers compare expenses in major cities around the world, said in an email.

“The 10 or so cheapest cities on the list are still far cheaper than any place in the United States, and this includes such popular destinations as Budapest, Krakow, Istanbul, and Prague,” bargain cities that are still far less expensive than their counterparts a bit to the west.

“There are huge sections of Europe where backpackers can live it up on US$50 or less per day, and most of these places are less crowded and touristy than the expensive cities as well,” said Wade, who researched and compiled the list of cities from cheapest to most expensive.

Bucharest (Romania), Kiev (Ukraine) and Sofia (Bulgaria) are the cheapest tourist cities on the new European Backpacker Index; Zurich (Switzerland), Stockholm (Sweden) and Oslo (Norway) ranked as the most expensive.

The Daily Backpacker Index daily rate for Bucharest is currently $24.69 a day; for Zurich, it’s $123.60 a day.

The index is based on the price of a hostel bed (one night in the cheapest bunk at the least expensive hostel in a good location with good reviews),two public transportation rides, three budget meals, the average cost of one cultural attraction and three inexpensive beers (or wine) for each day in each city. (Non-drinkers might have dessert and coffee or attend a local music performance instead, the listing notes.)

“The most significant changes this year had to do with currency fluctuations rather than changing prices. Most notably, the Turkish Lira is down about 20% since the beginning of 2013, so Istanbul and the rest of Turkey are quite cheap and really great value at the moment,” said Wade.

“The Pound and Euro have strengthened a bit so the most popular cities are all a little more expensive for the rest of us, but that could be reversed by summer because they are always bouncing around. Most museums and attractions kept their prices steady this past year, although a few of the most famous ones do seem to push them up a little every year.”

Valletta (Malta), Vilnius (Lithuania), Interlaken (Switzerland) and Santorini (Greece) are new this year, Wade said, mostly because of readers’ requests. Santorini was added in part “because many people are skipping Athens lately,” he said.

Links after each city provide general background and weather information, and more detail about prices.

Now in its fourth year, the index has been updated for 2014. During the past four years, Wade said, most changes to the lists have been refinements to the research process by him and currency fluctuations. Overall, he said, “most places have been pretty steady.”

It was “mildly surprising” but interesting that so many museums and public transportation systems have continued to keep prices stable, Wade said. “I think many people cynically assume that prices go up every year, but Europe is still mostly struggling economically and it’s nice that most cities are resisting the temptation to raise money just by raising prices.”

For travelers with slightly higher budgets than typical backpackers, and who prefer hotels, the Europe 3-Star Traveler Index for 2013 is a similar ranking, but uses a centrally located and well-rated 3-star hotel room, taxi rides and a higher allowance for food prices.

Almere-Digest

NSA turns "Get Smart" TV comedy into a reality show - Catalog Reveals NSA Has Back Doors for Numerous Devices - by Jacob Appelbaum, Judith Horchert and Christian Stöcker

When it comes to modern firewalls for corporate computer networks, the world's second largest network equipment manufacturer doesn't skimp on praising its own work. According to Juniper Networks' online PR copy, the company's products are "ideal" for protecting large companies and computing centers from unwanted access from outside. They claim the performance of the company's special computers is "unmatched" and their firewalls are the "best-in-class." Despite these assurances, though, there is one attacker none of these products can fend off -- the United States' National Security Agency.

Specialists at the intelligence organization succeeded years ago in penetrating the company's digital firewalls.

A document viewed by SPIEGEL resembling a product catalog reveals that an NSA division called ANT has burrowed its way into nearly all the security architecture made by the major players in the industry -- including American global market leader Cisco and its Chinese competitor Huawei, but also producers of mass-market goods, such as US computer-maker Dell.

These NSA agents, who specialize in secret back doors, are able to keep an eye on all levels of our digital lives -- from computing centers to individual computers, and from laptops to mobile phones. For nearly every lock, ANT seems to have a key in its toolbox. And no matter what walls companies erect, the NSA's specialists seem already to have gotten past them.

This, at least, is the impression gained from flipping through the 50-page document. The list reads like a mail-order catalog, one from which other NSA employees can order technologies from the ANT division for tapping their targets' data. The catalog even lists the prices for these electronic break-in tools, with costs ranging from free to $250,000.

In the case of Juniper, the name of this particular digital lock pick is "FEEDTROUGH." This malware burrows into Juniper firewalls and makes it possible to smuggle other NSA programs into mainframe computers. Thanks to FEEDTROUGH, these implants can, by design, even survive "across reboots and software upgrades." In this way, US government spies can secure themselves a permanent presence in computer networks. The catalog states that FEEDTROUGH "has been deployed on many target platforms."

The ANT division doesn't just manufacture surveillance hardware. It also develops software for special tasks. The ANT developers have a clear preference for planting their malicious code in so-called BIOS, software located on a computer's motherboard that is the first thing to load when a computer is turned on.

Another program attacks the firmware in hard drives manufactured by Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor and Samsung, all of which, with the exception of the latter, are American companies. Here, too, it appears the US intelligence agency is compromising the technology and products of American companies.

Other ANT programs target Internet routers meant for professional use or hardware firewalls intended to protect company networks from online attacks. Many digital attack weapons are "remotely installable" -- in other words, over the Internet. Others require a direct attack on an end-user device -- an "interdiction," as it is known in NSA jargon -- in order to install malware or bugging equipment.

Note EU-Digest : NSA turns "Get Smart" TV comedy into a reality show. Get Smart is an American comedy television series that satirizes the secret agent genre. Created by Mel Brooks with Buck Henry,^[1] the show stars Don Adams (as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86), Barbara Feldon (as Agent 99), and Edward Platt (as Chief). Henry said they created the show by request of Daniel Melnick, who was a partner, along with Leonard Stern and David Susskind, of the show's production company, Talent Associates, to capitalize on "the two biggest things in the entertainment world today"—James Bond and Inspector Clouseau.^[2] Brooks said: "It's an insane combination of James Bond and Mel Brooks comedy."

Read more: Catalog Reveals NSA Has Back Doors for Numerous Devices - SPIEGEL ONLINE

NSA Scandal requires EU Cyber-Barriers and "foreign Telecoms need to meet EU standards -- by Susan Crawford

The smooth flow of online communication and commerce between Europe and the U.S. is at risk of interruption, thanks in part to naked opportunism on the part of European telecommunications giants. If the governments involved fail to keep online barriers between the continents low, the Internet’s potential to be an engine of global economic growth will be constrained.

Take Deutsche Telekom AG (DTE) (DTE), the largest provider of high-speed Internet access and wireless services in Germany and the largest telecommunications organization in the European Union. To expand, the company will have to acquire additional communications companies; in order to do so, it hopes to free itself from the German government’s 32 percent ownership in the company. It has also expressed a desire to diversify into non-telecommunications lines of business, such as technical-services delivery.

The snooping scandal at the U.S. National Security Agency may help Deutsche Telekom achieve both these goals. T-Systems International GmbH, the company’s 29,000-employee-strong distribution arm for information-technology solutions, has been losing money selling systems-integration and data-processing services. Now, in response to customers’ loss of trust in American services, Reinhard Clemens, T-Systems’ chief executive officer, says he wants to refocus the company on providing cloud services.

Deutsche Telekom has also proposed to help Europe avoid NSA surveillance by creating “Schengen area routing,” a network for the 26 European countries that have agreed to remove passport controls at their borders. This network would supposedly allow these nations to securely exchange data among themselves. Conveniently, the Schengen area does not include the U.K., which is now known to be closely cooperating with the NSA.

Deutsche Telekom undoubtedly thinks that it will be able to collect fees from network operators in other countries that want their customers’ data to reach Deutsche Telekom’s customers -- and that the company has the market power to raise those tolls ever higher. As things stand, networks already try to avoid Deutsche Telekom’s wires when routing Internet traffic to German customers because the company refuses to swap traffic on a no-payment basis -- the common practice of competitive carriers around the world.

With hundreds of lobbyists in Berlin, Deutsche Telekom can see to it that if any German legislator is asked what to do about the NSA problem, he or she will respond with “Secure routing of traffic.” Surely this secure Schengen area routing would be even smoother if Deutsche Telekom owned more of the telecommunications operators involved.

Meanwhile, European telecom regulators, anxious to help European companies avoid the risk of being bought up by Verizon Communications Inc., AT&T Inc. or Carlos Slim, the Mexican wireless monopolist, are encouraging consolidation -- with Deutsche Telekom’s full support. “Now is the right time” for consolidation, Deutsche Telekom Chief Executive Officer Rene Obermann said in November.

Read more: NSA Scandal May Help Build Cyber-Barriers - Bloomberg

De machtsgreep van de megalobbyisten - Opinie - De Morgen

 Sinds deze zomer onderhandelen de Europese Commissie en de VS over een Trans-Atlantisch Vrijhandels- en Investeringsverdrag. Hoe meer we te weten komen over deze onderhandelingen, hoe zorgwekkender de informatie. De onderhandelingen verlopen niet transparant. Industriële lobby's zitten mee aan de onderhandelingstafel. Het Europese parlement, de nationale parlementen, de middenveldorganisaties, vakbonden, ngo's, kleine bedrijven en werkgeversorganisaties en burgers worden zeer beperkt geïnformeerd. Nochtans zal wat onderhandeld wordt een enorme impact hebben op ons samenlevingsmodel.

Controversieel is de discussie over het arbitragemechanisme voor investeringsbescherming (Investor-state dispute settlement, afgekort ISDS). Dat soort arbitrageovereenkomsten legt vast wat de rechten van investeerders zijn en hoe geschillen beslecht worden. Dat mechanisme zorgt ervoor dat bedrijven staten kunnen aanklagen voor internationale arbitragehoven. Boven de hoofden heen van nationale gerechtshoven en parlementen oordelen drie rechters over de aanklacht achter gesloten deuren.

De ISDS-regelgeving die de VS en Europa graag willen invoeren onder druk van de industriële lobby's, holt de democratie uit. Vermogende bedrijven gebruiken dit mechanisme om overheidsmaatregelen die de verwachte winst van de bedrijven mogelijks aantast, aan te klagen, zelfs al dienen deze maatregelen om de burgers of het milieu te beschermen. Te hallucinant voor woorden? Doemdenken? Neen.

 De machtsgreep van de megalobbyisten - Opinie - De Morgen

European Banking Union: Deal on Banking Union Will Test Goal of United Europe - by Andrew Higgens and David Jolly

Battling to defend its credibility after a series of troubled bank failures across the Continent, the European Union hoisted a long banner on the outside wall of its Brussels headquarters last year to trumpet Europe’s march “toward a genuine economic and monetary union.”

It was hardly a rousing battle cry. But it did at least acknowledge that despite the adoption of a common currency, the euro, Europe still had much to do to achieve real economic and monetary integration, a central pillar of the so-called European project since the early 1990s.

Shortly before midnight on Wednesday, after months of meetings in Brussels that often dragged into the wee hours, European finance officials finally reached a deal on how to plug a gaping hole in Europe’s economic defenses, agreeing to a centralized system to shut down sickly banks in the 17 member nations that use the euro.

But as with many of Europe’s grand ambitions, the construction of what was conceived as a solid banking union has been crimped by the often contradictory interests of different countries. The exercise has yielded more of a muddle than a unifying mission. A banking union has often been described as Europe’s most ambitious project since its decision in 1992 to establish a common currency. But the effort to create one has highlighted how difficult it is to act ambitiously for a bloc that has grown from six to 28 member states.

It has no clear shared view on whether it is the nucleus of a future European state, a free-trade zone, or merely an intergovernmental organization that irons out disagreements between countries. Add to this the fact that the bloc’s leaders have starkly different views of what caused Europe’s financial crisis and the long economic malaise that followed, and “it is no wonder the E.U. finds it so hard to take decisions,” said Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform, a policy research group.

“You have a sick patient on the bed and doctors gathered around who cannot decide on the nature of the illness or the medicine required to cure the patient.

Read more: Deal on Banking Union Will Test Goal of United Europe - NYTimes.com

Turkey: Large Scale Government Corruption - as scandal-hit PM Erdogan presses police purge

Istanbul prosecutors Friday began charging some of the prime minister's closest allies in a huge graft scandal which he has responded to with a spectacular purge of the police.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he was battling "a state within a state" and described the corruption probe, which comes ahead of crucial March polls, as a smear operation.

The crisis erupted Tuesday when police detained the sons of three ministers as part of a sweeping investigation, one of the most brazen challenges to Erdogan's 10-year rule.

A total of 89 people, including several close Erdogan allies were detained in a series of dawn raids, sparking a crisis which rattled the stock market and sent the Turkish lira to an all-time low.

Media reports on Friday said that prosecutors had begun handing out corruption indictments, with the first eight formally arrested and placed in pre-trial detention.

They are suspected of numerous offences including accepting and facilitating bribes for development projects and securing construction permits for protected areas.

The remaining detainees were appearing in court Friday after being interrogated by police, according to local media.

Read more: Scandal-hit Turkey PM presses police purge - International - World - Ahram Online

The Dark Force: The Financial Elite Who Gave Us 2008 Had No Eye to See and No Ear to Hear

We have seen the enemy and he is us; the enemy(us) being zero interest rates and unlimited easy money round the globe that could become a worse bubble than the 2008 credit bubble. The only thing we have to fear is QE that lasts forever.

In the spring of 2008 the IMF predicted that the economy of the developed nations would grow by 3.8% in 2009. Instead, due to the global financial crisis and the Great Recession, the economies of the U.S., Europe, Japan declined by 3.9%. That is a major mistake of prognostication. This preposterously optimistic forecast by the central bankers and establishment economists was shockingly wrong by a margin of almost 8%, indicating economists were totally unaware of the perfect storm of financial crisis descending on them.

These are the reputed establishment types who dominate enclaves like the IMF, as well as the Federal Reserve who are supposed to be measuring reality. The whole absurd farce reminds international economist William White (recommended to me by the soon-to-be Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Stanley Fischer) of the comic strip Pogo. Pogo’s mantra was “We have seen the enemy and he is us!”

The “enemy” were the brains of the global economic system and they were duping themselves and each other, White suggests. They were so far inside the system they did not see the crisis that was on top of them. It takes an “outsider” to see that, White believes. As to the Bank of International Settlements, the BIS, where White once was a top economist, “we put out both public warnings as to the dangers as well as in our private reports to clients,” White tells me. ” But, the warnings were ignored.”

The problem is cultural and the result of the denial of the elite, according to White; a tale of seduction amongst the creators of 2008: “ borrowers, lenders, regulators, central banks, academics and politicians, [who] were each seduced into believing different things that were not true.” The relationship between these various parties also contributed to them having “no eye to see and no ear to hear,” White told a distinguished audience on October 24 in London, at a presentation entitled What Has Gone Wrong With the Global Economy? Why Were Warnings Ignored? What Have We Learned From the Experience?

I mean to tell you what lessons White has learned, and even though he is not a regular on CNN or columnist for the FT, Stanley Fischer (you’ll be hearing a great deal more about Fischer, once he becomes Vice Chairman of the Fed) assured me that White saw 2008 coming as early as 2003 in a paper White, then at the BIS, gave at the Jackson Hole, Wyoming conclave of central bankers. He had the vision and the intelligence to see the disaster coming. And he is predicting odds on another problem sooner or later.

So, what disaster did White warn me and you about that could be coming down the road? “Expansionary monetary policy…has its shortcoming… such policies have undesirable unintended consequences,” White explained in London. By undesirable, he means a much larger ‘too big to fail’ problem than we had before.

He means the creation of “zombie companies and zombie banks” that “have contributed to more risk taking and unjustified increases in asset prices.” To sum up, the crisis is not over.

White fears another catastrophe from the knee-jerk, ever more aggressive, overly long-lasting easy money policies espoused by Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, to be inherited by Janet Yellen and Fischer once they are in place.

Here’s the gist of his warning. In the financial market crises of the past many decades — 1987, 2000, 2008 — the solution has always been the same, increase money supply and maintain rock-bottom low interest rates, says the former BIS economist and Canadian central banker. He is plainly worried about the outcome of a policy that just keeps printing more money aggressively with increasingly less positive results on economic growth than before.
White strongly questions his friend Ben Bernanke’s devotion to Quantitative Easing. What if the roots of fragility and accidents are just waiting to happen from being wrong about repeating over and over again the same excessive easy money policy? What if the Greenspan Put and the easy money that resolved crises in 1987, 1991, 1994, 2000, and 2008 are only a prologue for an even worse crisis that additional QE won’t solve?

White’s most intense fearsome nightmare is that the boom and rising bubble of home prices in Canada, Poland, Israel, Germany, Australia and New Zealand will eventually burst just as they did in the U.S. in 2007-2008, triggering another worldwide recession that the elite finance opinion makers will meet with an even more aggressive easing of money and lowering of the cost of money.

“Why do people believe what they believe?” White asks me on our hour-long transatlantic phone call. “People with influence over the system want us to believe that the system they prefer–more and cheaper money–is the best of all solutions for every crisis.”

What’s gone wrong is that ultra easy money policy is seen as a risk-free solution, even though the forecasting records based on easy money create forecasting records that are just too damned optimistic. “What if Bernanke’s faith in QE is the root of fragility and accidents waiting to happen?” White asks me. He has come to understand that there has grown an unstated alliance between economists and powerful interests, who have seduced each other into an unannounced alliance over a policy that benefits them in the short run, but may create more severe crises and disasters down the road.

In his October 24 London talk, White put it another way: “The Great Moderation, as Hyman Minsky would have predicted, generated the belief that the world had become a permanently less risky place.” The result of this mutual seduction was the manipulation of LIBOR, the reckless selling of toxic assets to unsuspecting buyers, and the hiding of highly leveraged risky activities in the off-the balance sheet shadow banking system.
As Pogo said: “We have the seen the enemy and he is us.”

The Financial Elite Who Gave Us 2008 Had No Eye to See and No Ear to Hear - Forbes