EU-Economy: EU selects projects worth 1.3 trillion-euro to revive economy and jobs

The European Union has drawn up a wish list of almost 2,000 projects worth 1.3 trillion euros ($1.59 trillion) for possible inclusion in an investment plan to revive growth and jobs without adding to countries' debts.

Investment has been a casualty of the financial crisis in Europe, tumbling around 20 percent in the euro zone since 2008, according to the European Central Bank.

Following a call by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, EU governments have submitted projects ranging from a new airport terminal in Helsinki to flood defenses in Britain, according to a document seen by Reuters.

"Almost 2,000 projects were identified with a total investment cost of 1,300 billion euros of which 500 billion are to be realized within the next three years,'' said the document, to be discussed by EU finance ministers on Tuesday.

Read more: EU selects projects worth 1.3 trillion-euro to revive economy and jobs

Privacy Rights: The NSA spent years snooping on the world's wireless carriers - by Chris Velazco

The NSA's got its long, spindly proboscises slurping up sweet, sweet information from within governments and businesses the world over, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to hear that wireless carriers are targets, too. That's the thrust of a lengthy new report from The Intercept: The NSA is capable of snooping in on a vast majority of the world's cell phone service providers thanks to an initiative called AURORAGOLD, as revealed in key documents from Edward Snowden's archives.

Rad more: The NSA spent years snooping on the world's wireless carriers

Middle East: ‘America in Retreat’: Why Neo-Isolationism Exploded Under Obama and What We Can Do About It - by James Kirchiek

Pulitzer Prize winner Bret Stephens’ new book looks at an America in retreat from global engagement.

One of President Barack Obama’s more annoying habits is a rhetorical propensity for describing policies in black-and-white terms. The nation can either accept his ideas or risk ghastly consequences.

Naturally when you paint the world in such stark colors, you see any and all opposition as delusional, malevolent, venal or a combination of all three. In no realm of policy-making has Obama’s obduracy been more profound than foreign affairs, the area about which he knows the least but presumes to know the most.

An early and memorable indication of Obama’s tendency to portray disagreement unfairly was his response to John McCain’s suggestion, during the 2008 presidential campaign, that America maintain a troop presence in Iraq for “maybe 100 years.” The U.S. maintains forces in Germany and Japan as a stabilizing presence decades after defeating those countries in war, the Republican nominee said, and the lives of its soldiers there are not under threat. Deliberately misconstruing McCain’s remarks in both letter and spirit, Obama assailed McCain as a warmonger, “willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq.”

A generous appraisal of Obama’s comments might chalk them up to mere campaign rhetoric. That might have been possible had not Obama—acting against the advice of his Secretary of State, Joint Chiefs Chairman, two Secretaries of Defense, and numerous other national security officials—executed plans to remove all American troops from Iraq by December 2011. The results of that rash decision, the most dire of which has been the rise of ISIS, are now plain for us to see. Obama had inherited an Iraq that was largely pacified, yet so committed was he to reducing America’s footprint in the Middle East that he sacrificed a set of hard-won gains to fulfill an ideological commitment.

Read more: ‘America in Retreat’: Why Neo-Isolationism Exploded Under Obama and What We Can Do About It - The Daily Beast

A Sovereign Wealth Fund For The Eurozone? - by Henning Meyer

Social Europe Journal has just published its latest Research Essay “Public Capital in the 21st Century” by Giacomo Corneo. The main argument of the paper is that the state should become a kind of investment state in order to make sure that high returns on capital do not further increase inequality but benefit the wider public. To achieve this, Corneo argues that governments should set up sovereign wealth funds to manage their investments and take advantage of low interest rates on sovereign bonds as investments should be debt-financed.

Having read the paper I was wondering whether this would also be an option to create the much-touted fiscal capacity for the Eurozone. Such a mechanism wouldn’t need Eurozone taxes or tax harmonisation (although both would be desirable) and does not require an open-ended commitment to joint debt. Here is how it could work: Let’s assume a Eurozone debt instrument backed by all governments can borrow for 1.5% in financial markets.

 For the sake of it let’s assume an annual return of 6% on a globally diversified portfolio, which is a realistic scenario. 25% of the return would be required to service the debt and Corneo argues that the rest should be used to pay back the principal so the debt incurred will be repaid in 15 years or so. I would argue that the remaining 75% of the return should be split between repaying the principal and increasing the size of the fund. So an alternative split of the return could look like this: 50% repayment of debt, 25% debt service, 25% increasing the size of the fund.

The key points are that the initial debt will be fully repaid after a defined period of time (so there is no open-ended commitment to joint debt) and that such a sovereign wealth fund could create a significant amount of revenue that could be the income source for a Eurozone budget. The budget would be administered by a Eurozone group in the European Parliament and could be used to help stabilise the currency area.

Apart from the need to complement this pro-cyclical instrument with counter-cyclical measures (issuing debt for current spending rather than investment that would also be repaid with priority?) that should kick in if there is a general crisis, I cannot see a reason for why this wouldn’t work, especially given that a budget of about 2% of GDP is regarded as big enough to effectively counterbalance asymmetric shocks.

Read more : A Sovereign Wealth Fund For The Eurozone?

De waanzin van de consumptiemaatschappij - blijf kopen tot je er bij neervalt

 We leven in een consumptie gerichte maatschappij, waarin alles de “perfecte” kleur, de “perfecte” geur, het “perfecte” uiterlijk etc. moet hebben. Onze maatschappij is verwend en staat totaal niet meer in contact met de echte realiteit; de natuur en onze natuur. Alles wordt met behulp van de zogenaamde (Westerse) “perfectie standaard” beoordeeld.

Read more: De waanzin van de consumptiemaatschappij « Groene Nationalisten

Dutch language posts in Almere Digest

Almere Digest has  started publishing some of its posts in Dutch to meet a growing number of requests for this by some of our local readers.

For those of you who don't know Dutch and want to read the post in their own language just go to the right hand column of Almere Digest  and click on the symbol of the man who is puliing the light cord and copy past what you want translated from this blog. The translator is self explanatory.

We hope this tool will shed some light on all your translations requests.

Almere-Digest

Woede om VVD-gegraai .....

VVD-fractieleider Halbe Zijlstra heeft zich uw woede op zijn hals gehaald door een mooi verhaal op te hangen over uw loon, terwijl u flink wordt gekort op uw vakantiegeld.

Zijlstra liet gisteren weten dat u maandelijks meer nettoloon zult ontvangen. Met die uitlating probeerde de liberaal op slinkse wijze een nieuwe nivelleringsoperatie van het kabinet te verbloemen. U krijgt namelijk beduidend minder vakantiegeld.

Uiteindelijk moest minister Henk Kamp van Economische Zaken met de billen bloot tijdens het vragenuurtje, meldt De Telegraaf.

Middeninkomens zien tot ruim 250 euro vakantiegeld verdwijnen. De VVD  benadrukt echter dat er gekeken moet worden naar het "totaalplaatje".

"Wat een 'gebrabbel' van Halbe Zijlstra .......

Read more: PowNed : Woede om VVD-gegraai