EU Immigration Policies: Immigrants Benefit Host Nations' Economies, so Why Is Public Perception Negative? - by Anna Leijonhufvud

Immigrants seeking democracy and better life benefit economy

Almira is one of many millions of immigrants who every year cross borders in search of a better life. A year ago, she left her home village in Croatia to find work in Helsingborg, Sweden, and today she's gone to Arbetsförmedlingen, a Swedish public employment agency, to find a job. "I worked as a cleaner for a hotel, but the work is tiresome," she said. "I would want to work as a receptionist, but I don't think my Swedish is good enough yet."

Immigrants like Almira are often seen as having a negative impact on the host country, such as when they allegedly take jobs from the native-born. But as anti-immigration views have gained traction--even in government  policy in some cases, as in the U.K.--an increasingly large body of work suggests that assumptions that immigrants are harmful to a country's economy are unfounded.

"There is overwhelming evidence that migrants have a positive impact on the economy," said Peter Sutherland, the U.N. secretary-general's special representative for migration and development. Sutherland was on the panel for the World Economic Forum's Open Forum session titled "Immigration: Welcome or Not?"

Also on the panel was former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who agreed with Sutherland that immigrants often bring lots of advantages with them. To make his point, Annan referred to a poster showing Albert Einstein trying to cross the border into a country with a sack of clothes on his back. The caption read: "The sack of clothes is not the only thing that the immigrant brings."

While many of the leaders speaking at the WEF appear convinced, the evidence that immigrants have a positive effect on their host countries' economies has not yet had much impact on public perception.

Editors Note: The question is why European Governments are  not making sure they change this Public perception about the benefits of immigration ? Instead they are letting populist, nationalistic politicians like Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Marie Le Pen in France and others in Europe control the debate.

EU-Digest

Netherlands - Banking Industry: Rabobank to Eliminate More Jobs in the Netherlands - by Martin van Tartwijk

Dutch lender Rabobank Group will eliminate more jobs in the Netherlands as it seeks to downsize its domestic operations and further reduce costs.

The bank said late Friday it will cut between 1,000 and 2,000 jobs in thenext several years, largely at its headquarters in Utrecht. The overhaul will also affect the Dutch activities of Rabobank's international arm, which will be integrated into the headquarters.

The move will help to reduce annual costs EUR220 million by 2016, the bank said. It follows a previously unveiled restructuring in the Netherlands that will result in 8,000 job losses and the closure of hundreds of branches.

The Dutch bank employs about 60,000 world-wide. Like other lenders, Rabobank is seeking to slash costs as it faces a stricter regulatory environment and as customers are increasingly shifting to online banking.

Read more: Rabobank to Eliminate More Jobs in the Netherlands - WSJ.com

Syria-Turkey: Kurds carve out autonomy as war rages - Erika Solomon

In the northeast corner of Syria, a pocket of stability is emerging amid the country’s raging civil war. Here the talk is of building, not bombing.

Local Kurdish leaders have launched projects to revive normal life and encourage people to stay. They are creating a regional administration, producing cheap fuel, subsidizing seeds for crops and trying to restore electricity to an area that had lost power for nearly 24 hours a day. And so far they are fighting off the forces of both President Bashar Assad and the rebels who want to oust him.

“We have no power or water. Food is short,” said Hardin, a 30-year-old teacher, shivering as cold rain began to fall at the funeral of a Kurdish fighter.

“But before, our minds and spirits were repressed. Now our dreams are becoming reality. This is the Kurdish moment. Going back to the way we were is not an option. It would be a betrayal of those who sacrificed their lives.”

The 30 million Kurds spread across Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey have been the world’s largest ethnic group without an independent homeland. Only the Kurds in Iraq, who displaced Iraqi forces in the 1990s when a U.S. and British no-fly zone was in place against Saddam Hussein, have carved out an area of real autonomy.

Now some of Syria’s 2.2 million Kurds sense an opportunity to take another step toward the long-term dream of creating an independent state of “Kurdistan.”

Recently, on the eve of peace talks in Switzerland, Kurds in Syria declared a provincial government in the area, after international powers rejected their request to send a separate delegation.

Local leaders insist they have no plans for secession but say they are preparing a local constitution and aim to hold polls early this year. This is not independence but “local democratic administration,” they say.

Read more: Kurds carve out autonomy as war rages | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR

World Inc.- Doomsday Scenario: "the alignment of NAFTA - Transpacific Partnership And EU-US Transatlantic Trade Agreement"

World Inc.,

A new era could be dawning for the world as capitalism undergoes a major re-alignment

The result will be a joyous celebration, not only on Wall Street, but also among the multi-national empires around the worldt.

Profit may finally be crowned King as all Nation states around the Globe unite into one World, Inc

"Yes, a coronation worthy of Louis XIV of France (1638-1715) “the Sun King,” who successfully increased the influence of the crown by establishing authority over the church and the aristocracy, thereby consolidating absolute monarchy in France", says the UK Progressive.

"The upcoming coronation (maybe) of King Profit, therefore, shall be the pinnacle of capitalism for there is no higher level for it to achieve beyond “absolutism.”

The date for the coronation has not yet been set, but it could be real soon, especially if the US Congress grants President Obama “fast-track” authority to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an agreement amongst 12 major Pacific nations for free trade, which is seen as very positive for multi-national businesses."

If you don't know what TPP is see it as similar to NAFTA, but on steroids,.

NAFTA might be seen as a success in terms of corporate profit but once NAFTA officially crossed the border into Mexico in 1994, all hell broke loose for the middle class folks. Mexico’s annual per capita growth became a flat-line, the lowest in the hemisphere, real wages are down, unemployment is up.

Heavily subsidized U.S. crops made Mexican crop prices drop, driving small Mexican farmers off the farm and resulting in mass unemployment.

Today some 20 million Mexicans live with food poverty, while hundreds of thousands of Mexicans have headed for the U.S. border to find “a better life”  resulting in major US immigration problems  

On the other hand, even though NAFTA has not benefitted average taxpayers in any way or form, NAFTA  has proven to be very beneficial for multi-national corporations.

They can now set up shop at will just across the US border, without any nagging and complex US environmental  and health regulations to adhere to while benefiting from dirt-cheap local wages. As Ross Perot once said when he ran for the US presidency in 1994, "you can hear the sucking sound of US jobs going to Mexico".

Consequently, also labor-wise NAFTA has been a bad deal for all the partners of the agreement, except, yes you guessed it right, the trans national corporations. 

The TTP will be granting even  greater privileges to transnational corporations than with NAFTA, fulfilling corporations wildest dreams. A Wikileaks’ secret document shows how transnationals will henceforth be able to sue governments if a country’s laws or policies get in the way of corporate profits. Yes, transnationals will have carte blanche to do whatever they want, like King Louis redux.

When a nation gets in the way of profits, no problem; transnationals can sue the government for damages to profitability as part of the so-called  investor-to-state dispute settlement (ISDS) agreements

What would make the "Coronation" even more complete and threatening would be an agreement  between the EU-US on a TransatlanticTtrade Pact (TTIP).

It would mean opening the door for big corporations to enforce their interests against EU legislation," said EU parliamentarian Bernd Lange. "This would deprive states of crucial policy space in important fields such as health and environment." 

The EU-Commission, however,  is dangling unsubstantiated benefits of this trade agreement  including the dubious possibility that it could bring an annual windfall of 119 billion euros ($161 billion) to the 28-member bloc.

One can only hope that the EU-Parliament requests complete transparency on all the details of these ongoing negotiations and asks all theprobing and  necessary questions. They should certainly not overlook one of the most important and negative factors in these negotiations, which is that they are dealing with a partner across the table who has spied on them (NSA) and will  probably continuing to do so.

EU-Digest

European cybercop - by Jonathan Ames

The EU believes strict regulation is the path to online security, and accountants are already lining up to seize the advice work

As action heroes go, the sombre-suited members of the European Commission and their hordes of faceless Eurocrats aren’t a patch on a pumped, bloodied Bruce Willis in his sweat-soaked vest.

But the commission’s president, plucky Portuguese José Barroso, and his band of 28 fellow commissioners have cast themselves in the roles of cyber policemen to rival the follicly challenged American and his bid to save humanity in Die Hard 4.0.

Film buffs will know that Willis has to do battle with a mastermind cyber criminal who first wants to hack into the US national security systems before doing all sorts of nasty things and then, of course, taking over the world. Winning the day involves two hours of shouting, gunfire, explosions and cheeky dialogue.

Typically, the European Commission’s version is somewhat more prosaic. It involves a directive – the draft Network and Information Security Directive, to be precise.

But from where they sit in Brussels, that 48 pages of prospective legislation is no less important or indeed less impressive than detective John McClane seeing off the hacker’s henchmen by launching a police cruiser at a looming helicopter. It’s just a matter of perspective and, Europe being Europe, taste.

Also, Europe being Europe, the directive is not exactly straightforward. Confusion reigns over what it will look like in final draft, which business sectors will be affected, whether it is necessary or is just another example of Brussels legislating simply because it can and, indeed, whether it will ever come to pass in light of the forthcoming European Parliament elections.

What is relatively certain is that cyber security is an area that ultimately will be legislated for in Europe. And some suggest the global accountancy practices are already aiming to steal a march on law firms to advise multinational corporations on how to cope.

Should the legal profession battle the accountants for market share in advising on the directive?
As one lawyer comments: “We don’t go through a single day without there being a headline about cyber security, so clearly something needs to happen.”

That suggests the directive, whether in present or subsequent form, represents an opportunity. But first, lawyers must get a grip on what the draft legislation will cover. And doing so requires patience.

Read more: European cybercop | Analysis | The Lawyer

Corporate Greed: 13 Mindblowing Facts About America’s Tax-Dodging Corporations

A judicious writer avoids adjectives like “mindblowing,” especially when covering political or economic issues.
But no other word seems to describe the stunning reality of corporate taxation in modern America, which cries out for the italics-heavy, exclamation-point-driven format made famous by Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

Stylistic overkill? Read these thirteen facts and you may change your mind.

1. We’re told we can’t “afford” full Social Security benefits, even though closing corporate tax-haven loopholes would pay for Obama’s “chained CPI” benefit cut more than ten times over!

Abusive offshore tax havens cost the US $150 billion in lost tax revenue every year (via FACT Coalition). That’s $1.5 trillion over the next ten years.

The “chained CPI” cut, proposed by President Obama and supported by Republicans, is projected to “save” a total of $122 billion to $130 billion over the same time period by denying benefits to seniors and disabled people.

It’s true. “Serious” politicians and pundits are demanding that ordinary people sacrifice earned benefits, while at the same time allowing corporations to avoid more than ten times as much in taxes.

2. Corporate tax rates are near their 60-year low, even though profits are at a 60-year high!

Need we say more?  (Source: Americans for Tax Fairness.)

3. Wells Fargo got $8 billion in tax breaks, even as executives at its subsidiary Wachovia avoided indictment for laundering money for the Mexican drug cartels!

 That’s right. Wells Fargo paid a negative tax rate of -1.4 percent between 2008 and 2010 while Wachovia, a Wells Fargo subsidiary, admitted to laundering more than $378 billion for Mexican drug gangs.

We’re talking about crazed killers like “El Loco” and gangs like “Los Zetas” – gangs who cut people’ heads off and toss them out onto disco dance floors or display them in the town square.

Wachovia bankers ignored repeated warnings from law enforcement officials, and continued to launder money for cartels that have murdered tens of thousands.

And yet no criminal indictments were handed down because, as a Senate investigator told Bloomberg News, “”There’s no capacity to regulate or punish them because they’re too big to be threatened with failure.”

4. Some other huge corporations paid less than nothing, too.

Pepco Holdings (-57.6% tax rate)
General Electric (-45.3%)
DuPont (-3.4%)
Verizon (-2.9%)
Boeing (-1.8%)
Honeywell (-0.7%)

(Source: Citizens for Tax Justice)

5. The amount of money US corporations are holding offshore is an estimated one trillion dollars!

Rather than tax these profits the way other countries do, corporate politicians are promoting a tax “repatriation” break that would let corporations “bring this money home” while paying even less than their currently low rates.

They tried that in 2004 and it didn’t create any jobs. In fact, corporations took the tax break and then fired thousands of people. What “repatriation” did do is line a lot of wealthy investors’ pockets. So, naturally, they want to do it again.

6. One building in the Cayman Islands is the official location of 18,857 corporations!

According to the Government Accountability Office, a five-story building called “Ugland House” is home to nearly twenty thousand corporations. That’s impressive, especially for such a small edifice. (Perhaps it has supernatural half-floors and space-time defying “mind tunnels” like the office in Being John Malkovich.)

While impressive, Ugland House’s distinction pales next to that of 1209 North Orange Street in Wilmington, Delaware. According to one investigation, that address is home to 217,000 corporations.

That’s because Delaware has very generous tax rules – and, as a result, is home to more than half of all the corporate subsidiaries in the United States.That’s startling, since only 1/342th of the nation’s population lives in that state (917,092 residents, out of a national total of 313,914,040, according to the latest( census results).

7. Conservatives complain about the “official” corporate tax rate in this country, but corporations actually pay roughly one-third of the official rate in actual taxes.

The official, or “statutory,” corporate tax rate is 35 percent. But the actual rate paid by American corporations is only 12 percent, less than that paid by many middle-class Americans.  (Source: The FACT Coalition.) 

In fact, US Corporations pay less tax as a percentage of the GDP than corporations in Canada. Or Japan …

… or South Korea. Or Norway. Or Luxembourg, New Zealand, Israel, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, and Italy.  (Source: OECD StatsExtract interactive database.) 

8. Corporations used to pay 30 percent of Federal taxes, and now they pay less than 7 percent!

That’s because the corporate tax rate has plunged since Dwight D. Eisenhower was President and is now the lowest it’s been in modern history.

(Source: FACT Coalition.)

9. Big corporations paid $216 million to Congress and got $223 billion in tax breaks!

As Citizens for Tax Justice and USPIRG reported, 280 large and profitable corporations contributed $216 million to Congressional campaigns over four election cycles and got nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars in tax breaks.

That’s a terrific investment for them – a return of more than a thousand to one – but it’s a bad deal for the American people.

10. We don’t even know who owns some corporations, even though that makes it easier to evade taxes, dodge creditors, avoid paying alimony or child support, and even fund terrorism!

Here are some examples of investments that might represent a terror threat. Corporate interests are blocking disclosure rules that would help protect our national security.

11. Bank of America committed foreclosure fraud, was bailed out by the government, and then paid no taxes on $4.4 billion in profit!

That’s right. In 2010, while BofA was negotiating a sweet settlement deal for its foreclosure fraud, it paid nothing in taxes. (Source: FACT Coalition.) Zero, on $17.2 billion in offshore earnings. (Source: Americans for Tax Fairness.)

Its $4.1 billion tax break came on the heels of the bank’s taxpayer-funded bailout, immunity from prosecution for its criminal employees, and a cushy government settlement for its foreclosure fraud.

Now David Dayen reports that the bank has apparently continued to defraud customers in violation of its government settlement. Whistleblowers have stated in affidavits that they were “told to lie” to customers, continued to deceive homeowners before foreclosing on them, and flipped customers to new servicing companies to invalidate previous homeowner agreements.

12. What they call “tax reform” would actually prevent our elected representatives from giving businesses financial incentives to improve our lives!

The word “reform” is an honorable one that’s been put to some dishonorable uses lately. “Entitlement reform,” for example, is merely a euphemism for gutting Social Security and Medicare.

Similarly, corporate-backed politicians are pushing a formula for permanent corporate tax breaks and calling it “tax reform.” They insist their “reform” be “revenue neutral” and say it will “broaden the base while lowering the rate.”

Here’s an English translation: The current, unsustainably low rates for corporations would be made permanent, while eliminating many tax deductions in the name of “simplification.”

Here’s what that really means: The domestic tax credit for creating jobs? Gone. Tax breaks for protecting the environment with clean energy, rather than harming other people’s health and leaving a mess for the rest of us to clean up? Gone.

All in all we’d lose dozens of important policies that make our lives better, while permanently fixing corporate taxes at today’s cushy giveaway rates.

“Reform”? Ripoff is more like it.

13. Despite their greed, mismanagement, and freeloading, tax-dodging corporations are using shell organizations like “Fix the Debt” and “the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget” to tell ordinary Americans they have to sacrifice even more to preserve corporate wealth!

These organizations are using the heads of failed banks – people like Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs – to dispense “advice on the economy.” That’s like getting navigation tips from the captain of the Exxon Valdez.

(Tax breaks for Exxon Mobil: $4.1 billion between 2008 and 2010. The company paid no taxes at all in 2009.)

These executives and their paid spokespeople tell the rest of us we need to “sacrifice” and “tighten our belts” so that their party can go on forever. And too often they’re treated as credible sources, rather than as corrupting influences on our public life.

It’s all true – and there are many more astonishing facts to be found in the world of corporate taxation. To fix the economy more people will need to learn about them – and demand that they be changed.

Read more: 13 Mindblowing Facts About America’s Tax-Dodging Corporations

Global Economy: DEBT MASQUERADING AS GROWTH!

The market Oracle reports: "The greatest economic, political and societal collapse in recorded history is unfolding and has been doing so ever since the final denouement of partially sound money occurred at Bretton Woods II in August 1971 – thereby allowing governments, the financial systems and elites to substitute money printed out of thin air and politically correct/corrupt legislation for sound economic policies.  This process has been unfolding for 40 years and is nearing its demise.  

Growth now is a function of expanding credit, financing government and consumer consumption and calling it GDP.  The developed world has become Something for nothing societies are like locusts they eat everything right down to its roots, including next year’s seed corn.  They will issue debt until it no longer can be sold. 

They will print money until it is no longer accepted.  This process is well established and underway (think Venezuela, Greece, Argentina, this is the future).  To illustrate the LACK of GROWTH, look at this chart of GDP from Chris Wood at CLSA and subtract the deficit:

Most economists are PREDICTING accelerating GDP growth in 2014; you sure wouldn’t come to that conclusion based upon median family incomes since 2008;  

Or the crash in PERSONAL incomes over the last year  

As you can see, the only period that compares to this CURRENT CRASH in disposable income in the last 20 years was the crash of 2007-2009.  Do you think this reflects a robust economy in 2014 as predicted by the MSM and Keynesians?  To grow the economy, we must borrow money to finance spending and report it as GDP.  DEBT MASQUERADING as GROWTH! 

Now, the developed world’s economies have been hollowed out (by runaway regulation, taxes and crony capitalism) and much of the wealth creation occurs in the emerging world.  Crony capitalists and their minions in government just attack the private sector where future growth and productivity must come from. 
 
They carve it up and destroy the future creative destruction (aka “Capitalism”) which must occur for growing middle classes and economies.  The powers that be are MINTING fire hoses of NEW money, creating at least 8000 million dollars/yen a DAY (2 million million a year or 2+ trillion per year) to support the global economy, bankrupt sovereigns and financial systems.   

Very little BAD can happen when they are printing and injecting this amount of money into the financial system and government coffers on a daily/yearly basis. “Currencies don’t float they just SINK at different rates”

Asset-backed economies provide the ILLUSION of growth in the developed world driven by currency depreciation (ASSET prices rise/reprice as the purchasing power of the currency they are denominated in sinks) and never-ending leverage to fund consumption and HIGHER ASSET prices.  This is insane behavior, but now is the last refuge of the powers that be.
 
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule." 

EU-Digest