EU Economy: To Avoid A 2016 Crash, The Major Powers Need To Pull In The Same Direction - by Anton Muscatelli

It looks already as if 2016 will be a pivotal year for the world economy. RBS has advised investors to “sell everything except for high-quality bonds” as turmoil has returned to stock markets. The Dow Jones and S&Pindices have fallen by more than 6% since the start of the year, which is the worst ever yearly start. There is a similar story in other major markets, with the FTSE leading companies losing some £72bn of value in the same period.

 These declines have come on the back of a major shock to the Chinese stock market. China’s stock exchange is very different from that of other major economies, as Chinese companies don’t rely on it to fund themselves to the same extent, using debt instead. All the same, the repeated suspensions of trading as the Chinese circuit-breakers came into operation (as they do when share prices fall too sharply) spooked investors around the world.

 On top of that we are seeing commodity prices continuing to retreat. Oil prices have dropped towards $30 per barrel and don’t look likely to increase soon, with Iranian and Saudi oil production continuing to sustain supply. We are seeing many emerging economies dependent on petroleum revenues suffering (Brazil, Russia), and there is speculation that many oil producers (and perhaps even Saudi Arabia) are having to abandon their currencies’ link with the US dollar.

 It would be good if, in 2016, we began to see greater macroeconomic cooperation between the G20. In an ideal world, the G20 economies would seek to share out the effort of sustaining world demand through targeted public investments designed to restore business and consumer confidence. We saw this very briefly immediately after the financial crisis. Since 2009 there have been no attempts to act collectively on fiscal policy. Those days seem unfortunately very distant now.

Read more: To Avoid A 2016 Crash, The Major Powers Need To Pull In The Same Direction

The Netherlands: Prime Minister Rutte to Visit Silicon Valley January 31 through February 2

Dutch PM Mark Rutte

Prime Minister Mark Rutte will travel to California January 31 through February 2 with Special Envoy for StartupDelta Neelie Kroes to meet major tech companies, startup entrepreneurs, and knowledge institutes in and around Silicon Valley.

The Netherlands and the US are front-runners of innovation. With its large tech companies, startups, and leading universities, Silicon Valley is the most innovative region in the world. Collaborating with companies and knowledge institutes in Silicon Valley creates great opportunities for the Netherlands.

Many companies in Silicon Valley have located a part of their European activities in the Netherlands. Also, an increasing number of Dutch companies are active in Silicon Valley. The Netherlands and California are already working closely together as they target climate change, agriculture, and the global promotion of clean and smart transportation.

For additional details on the trip contact: Ilse van Overveld, 202-274-2630, or Carla Bundy, 202-274-2632, in Washington, DC,

Almere-Digest

Turkey’s meddling in Syria brings terror to Istanbul - by Stephen Kinzer

Today’s bombing in a historic Istanbul square frequented by tourists was the indirect result of Turkey’s wildly adventurist policy toward the Syrian conflict. It is a lesson to other countries, including the United States: Do not believe you can control insurgent groups inside Syria. Meddle too deeply in their conflict, and the war will come home to you.

All of the dead killed  in Istanbul were foreign citizens; eight were German and one was Peruvian. 

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that the suicide bomber was a young Syrian. Efforts by the government to limit reporting of the incident add to the presumption that the ISIS terror group was responsible. That would make sense.

Erdogan was once a bosom buddy of the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad. When the first antigovernment protests erupted in Syria in 2011, Erdogan advised his friend how to respond. Assad replied that he needed no advice and would do what he believed best. That set off Erdogan’s volcanic emotions. He vowed to do everything in his power to depose Assad — including supporting terror groups like ISIS.

Turkey has allowed foreign fighters to pass through its territory to join those groups. It has allowed ISIS to maintain clinics inside Turkey where wounded fighters are treated and then sent back to the battlefield. Its intelligence service has illegally shipped weapons to insurgents in Syria. When journalists discovered one caravan of weaponry, and military officers protested, Erdogan had them arrested.

Under intense pressure from the United States and its other NATO allies, Turkey has begun to reassess its support for anti-Assad groups. That led ISIS to carry out suicide bombings inside Turkey.

The first two served Erdogan’s purposes because they targeted Kurds: one outside a Kurdish cultural center in the border town of Suruc in July, which killed 33 people, and then a horrific follow-up in Ankara in October in which more than 100 were killed as they marched to protest attacks on Kurdish groups. Kurdish political leaders complained bitterly that the government was not protecting them.

Erdogan sees two great enemies in Syria: the Assad government and Kurds. He was happy to collaborate with any group, including ISIS, that shared his wish to destroy those two forces. Terror groups, however, are never satisfied with anything less than total commitment. It was folly for Turkish leaders to believe they could manipulate Syrian rebel groups for their own ends. They did not heed President John F. Kennedy’s famous observation that “those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.”

Today’s bombing in Istanbul may be the incident that finally brings Turkey to shift focus and concentrate its efforts on the true enemy: violent jihadist groups like ISIS and the Nusra Front, which is Syria’s Al Qaeda affiliate. It is late in the game for such a switch. By allowing ISIS and other anti-Assad groups to move freely in Turkish towns along the border, Turkey set the stage for conflict. It was inevitable that ISIS would continually demand more from Turkey. When Turkey reached a limit, it became an enemy.

Until now, terror attacks inside Turkey have been carried out either in the border area, the Kurdish region, or places where critics of Erdogan’s government gather. This one is different. It happened in a historic square near magnificent mosques and Byzantine ruins that attract millions of tourists each year. The dead include foreigners, mainly Germans. This will naturally affect tourism, but more important is the symbolism of such violence striking at the nation’s historic heart.

In a rant that reflected his emotion-driven approach to politics, Erdogan said foreign academics and writers shared responsibility for the attack. He even named MIT professor Noam Chomsky, a longtime defender of the Kurds, as one of them. That reflected his evidently deep-seated view that Turkey’s estimated 15 million Kurds pose more of a threat to the nation than terror groups like ISIS. Today’s bombing may finally force him to reconsider.

This liberal order of openness, of vibrant democracies, and of market economies was anchored on the transatlantic relationship. But today, it shows few signs of being defended by most EU governments. With the United States closing shop for the 2016 presidential election campaign and with U.S. interest in Europe so weak, EU leaders will continue to pursue their own national agendas.

Two European leaders could change the dynamics of these trends: David Cameron, the British prime minister, and Merkel.

Read more: Turkey’s meddling in Syria brings terror to Istanbul - The Boston Globe

European Capital Markets: London, Berlin, Amsterdam: Capitals of the Next Economy -by Hannah Furlong

Whether the European Commission’s Circular Economy Package is ambitious enough is still under debate, but at least it leaves some flexibility for potential partnerships, industry-led and local government-led initiatives to shape the next economy.

Some cities are already seizing related opportunities: Berlin and London are sharing economy leaders, and the City of Amsterdam is conducting cutting-edge research for its transition to a circular economy.

Gordon Innes, the CEO of London’s official promotional and economic development company, London & Partners, recently wrote on why London has the opportunity to become the sharing economy capital of the world.

“As Europe’s largest technology hub with unrivalled access to talent, growth capital and international markets, we have an ideal environment for sharing economy businesses to scale and grow,” he wrote in Tech City News.

Innes explains that these businesses can benefit from national and local initiatives, including Sharing Economy UK, a trade group, and the Smart London plan, which in part aims to ensure that London “makes the most of new technologies and use its creative strengths” so the city can adequately adapt to its growing population. It is expected that London will be home to 10 million people by 2030.

He also claims that London has more sharing economy businesses than any other city in Europe. Examples of these include accommodation services One Fine Stay and Love Home Swap, peer-to-peer money lending company Zopa, car-sharing services BlaBlaCar and Liftshare, and driveway renting platform Justpark.

“This notion of making the best use of under-utilised assets such as spare rooms and driveways is another benefit of the sharing economy model and has the potential to turn London into a city of micro-entrepreneurs,” writes Innes.



Read more: London, Berlin, Amsterdam: Capitals of the Next Economy | Sustainable Brands

The Netherlands - burial: Graves in the Netherlands are rented - Elena Holodny

If you want your grave to literally be your final resting place, we might not recommend getting buried in the Netherlands.

"[G]raves in the Netherlands are typically rented for 10 or 20 years, with remains being cleared out once the lease expires," as RBC Capital analysts recently noted in a report.

Interestingly, this has nothing to do with burial rituals. Rather, it's because there isn't enough cemetery space in the country.

Poor soil conditions and high ground water tables that slow down the "skeletonisation process" of the bodies preclude the Dutch from building up enough cemeteries, Paul J. M. Van Steen and Piet H. Pellenbarg of the University of Groningen noted in a 2004 research report on burials in the Netherlands.

And while it's possible to fix (or at least mitigate) these two geographic issues by artificial means, the authors note that it's expensive for cemeteries to do so.

Read more: Graves in the Netherlands are rented - Business Insider

Political Mismanagement : 10 Economic, Political and Social Global Forecasts Indicate Troubled Times Ahead In 2016 - by RM

The legacy of a totally failed Middle East Policy

As a wise man once said "Without Freedom Of Speech There Are Only Official Lies"

Below links to 10 reports which indicate that the overall state of our globe in 2016 does not look very rosy.  Click on the headline to get the report.

 

European economies face harsh headwinds from China

Is the EU imploding?The Europe Question In 2016

Toward Global Disaster: Chaos and Intervention in the Middle East

Global Economy: Soros: It's the 2008 crisis all over again

Middle East: Where Will this War Frenzy Lead?

EU Presidency: ′Turbulent times′ as Netherlands takes over EU presidency

USA: To understand Donald Trump, look to Europe

Global Economy Catching China's Cold

China: Don't blame the economy for China's latest market meltdown

US Economy: Could the American economy tank in 2016?

Change however lies in the hands of the people, and if politicians have made life worse rather than better for you - get rid of them. Don't sit on the sidelines staring at your navel or pointing your finger at others.   

After all : "The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by its private citizens" - Alexis de Tocqueville

EU-Digest

Weapons Industry: U.S. is the Mecca of Weapons and Killing Machine Exports.

There was a time when America’s greatest exports were high-quality consumer goods, such as automobiles and textiles. Today, most American manufacturing has been outsourced to Chinese and Latin American sweatshops. However, there’s still one thing that the U.S. does extremely well: design, manufacture and export the finest killing machines and equipment of any nation on the planet. Furthermore, our nation’s defense industry sells more of them than anyone else in the world.

This windfall for fine corporations such as Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and others is due largely to recent contracts with their three biggest customers: South Korea, Qatar and our reliable Middle Eastern “ally”, Saudi Arabia. Despite the fact that global weapons sales have leveled off and more companies are jumping into the industry in order to get their piece of the pie, U.S. weapons sales rose from $26.7 billion to $36.2 billion in 2014 – representing an increase of 35%.

While the U.S. is leading the parade of death and destruction, it’s not marching alone. In second place is Russia, having sold $10.2 billion worth of weaponry (a slight drop from the previous year), followed by Sweden, France and China.

The Congressional study in which these figures were presented finds that a weakened global economy has led to much slower sales. In fact, despite a slight increase in global weapons purchases (approximately .03%), the study found that “the international arms market is not likely growing at all.”

This state of affairs has in turn increased competition among weapons manufacturers.

And the U.S. is coming out on top. While the country is crumbling from within, those with connection to the weapons industry are swimming in pools of champagne, nibbling on truffles and fine caviar while riding aboard their private jets and luxury yachts, financed by blood-soaked dollars. It’s not likely to change, either.

Weapons manufacturers are offering great deals, such as flexible financing (making certain their customers remain debt slaves for decades), co-production agreements, and counter-trade agreements (essentially, a form of in-kind payment or barter).

Read more: U.S. is the Mecca of Weapons and Killing Machine Exports. Doesn't That Make You So Proud? - The Ring of Fire Network