Al Gore is a very lucky man

Saving the world is not without its rewards

by Bob Doson

Mitt Romney's net worth of $250 million is well-known by virtually everyone in America: after all, it was the primary campaign offensive used by the Obama team against his presidential challenger in an election run largely down wealth, and social class lines, and whom "Democrats targeted in ads and speeches as being out of touch with most Americans." What many may not know is that staunch democrat Al Gore's own personal wealth, has soared from virtually nothing in 1999 to a staggering $200 million according to an analysis conducted by Bloomberg.

To wit: "The former senator, who spent most of his working life in Congress, had a net worth of about $1.7 million in 1999 and assets that included pasture rents from a family farm and royalties from a zinc mine, remnants of his rural roots in Carthage, Tennessee... Fourteen years later, he made an estimated $100 million in a single month. In January, the Current TV network, which he helped to start in 2004, was sold to Qatari-owned Al Jazeera Satellite Network for about $500 million. After debt, he grossed an estimated $70 million for his 20 percent stake, according to people familiar with the transaction. Two weeks later, Gore exercised options, at $7.48 a share, on 59,000 shares of Apple Inc. stock that he’d been granted for serving on the Cupertino, California-based company’s board since 2003. On paper, it was about a $30 million payday based on the company’s share price on the day he claimed the options."

Bottom line: "Whatever you think of Gore, one thing is indisputable: leveraging his aura as a technology seer and his political and climate work connections, Gore has remade himself into a wealthy businessman, amassing a fortune that may exceed $200 million. That’s close to the $250 million net worth of 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, whom President Barack Obama and Democrats targeted in ads and speeches as being out of touch with most Americans."

Such a designation is missing when it comes to Al Gore, about whom people indeed think many things:

Albert Arnold Gore Jr., 65, is a lot of things to a lot of people. Among friends and fans, he’s the progressive Democrat who should have been president, visionary author and Internet prophet, the man who more than anyone drove climate change to the center of public consciousness.

Detractors see Gore as a limousine liberal, tiresome pedant and climate alarmist who lives a jet-setting, carbon-profligate lifestyle while preaching asceticism for everyone else.

The Oil Price Enigma

Political developments can change any scenario almost overnight

By S. Fred Singer

Oil is the single most important commodity purchased today, and its price influences the fortunes of every nation on the planet in significant ways. Yet nobody can tell you with honesty that they know where the price is headed.

Thirty years ago (and much younger then), I imagined that I could construct a model to calculate the future price of oil—and even persuaded some others to accept this idea. Needless to say, the price never really performed as my model had predicted, except in very general terms; it did go higher. The experience left me with a deep appreciation of the importance of assumptions in models—in this case, extraneous political parameters Usefully also, I acquired a certain skepticism towards models generally.

The situation then was relatively simple: There was just an OPEC monopolist and the ‘rest-of-the-world’ producers. Today, the situation is much more complicated and I’m not sure I know how to predict a future price for crude oil.

In 1982, the world price was controlled by an OPEC core, mainly Saudi Arabia, which had excess production capacity and could also afford to cut their production in order to maintain a price. In fact, in the early 1980’s, Saudi Arabia cut its production from 10 million barrels per day (MBD) down to almost 2 MBD in order to sustain a high world price. Ultimately, they failed—probably because they needed the revenue (i.e., total number of barrels sold times the world price). The other world producers, including the rest of OPEC, were simply “price-takers,” selling as much as they could produce at whatever the world price happened to be.

Under those circumstances, the scenario was fairly simple. One assumed that the OPEC core acted rationally, which means they would try to maximize their ‘discounted profit stream’ by adjusting their production from year to year (or perhaps month to month) to obtain the optimum price path over time: not too low a price to cut profit per barrel—and not too high to cut the number of barrels sold.

The European Miracle

"Why Europe? Because Europe enjoyed a relative lack of political constraint."

By ralph raico

Among writers on economic development, P.T. Bauer is noted both for the depth of his historical knowledge, and for his insistence on the indispensability of historical studies in understanding the phenomenon of growth (Walters 1989, 60; see also Dorn 1987). In canvassing the work of other theorists, Bauer has complained of their manifest "amputation of the time dimension":

The historical background is essential for a worthwhile discussion of economic development, which is an integral part of the historical progress of society. But many of the most widely publicized writings on development effectively disregard both the historical background and the nature of development as a process. (Bauer 1972, 324–25)

Too many writers in the field have succumbed to professional overspecialization combined with a positivist obsession with data that happen to be amenable to mathematical techniques. The result has been models of development with little connection to reality:

Abilities and attitudes, mores and institutions, cannot generally be quantified in an illuminating fashion.… Yet they are plainly much more important and relevant to development than such influences as the terms of trade, foreign exchange reserves, capital output ratios, or external economies, topics which fill the pages of the consensus literature. (Ibid., 326)

Even when a writer appears to approach the subject historically, concentration on quantifiable data to the neglect of underlying institutional and social-psychological factors tends to foreshorten the chronological perspective and thus vitiate the result:

It is misleading to refer to the situation in eighteenth -and nineteenth-century Europe as representing initial conditions in development. By then the west was pervaded by the attitudes and institutions appropriate to an exchange economy and a technical age to a far greater extent than south Asia today. These attitudes and institutions had emerged gradually over a period of eight centuries. (Ibid., 219–20)[1] 

India reduced to a stumbling elephant

One cannot but marvel at the infinite capacity of the politicians to ruin a perfectly good growth story

By Kunal Kumar Kundu

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory - will this define India and its future? For all the talk of favorable demography, a huge middle class and likely impetus being provided by rapid urbanization and concomitant consumption, India is failing itself where it hurts the most - in the quality of governance. 

The eulogies reserved for India, even a decade back, seems to have been turned on their head as the global media space is awash with stories of never-ending streams of corruption (mostly from the government and bureaucracy) and severe attacks on civil liberties, especially violence against women. 

More worryingly, India’s response to these has been endless sessions of debates and discussions and formation of committees but with very little real action on the ground. 

Not surprisingly, the International Monetary Fund, in its latest "Regional Economic Outlook" released on April 29, while expressing optimism about Asian growth prospects, feels that emerging economies like India and China must improve government institutions and liberalize rigid labor and product markets if they wish to reach the level of developed countries. 

It clearly states that, "emerging Asia is potentially susceptible to the 'middle-income trap', a phenomenon whereby economies risk stagnation at middle-income levels and fail to graduate into the ranks of advanced economies." 

Just when we thought that the scandal over allocation of 2G telecom spectrum was behind us, came the coal-block allocation scandal, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, scandal and others. 

Rothbard versus Rothbard

A False Dilemma

by Joseph R. Stromberg

Scholars and critics who deal with the life work of a significant thinker tend to divide such a thinker’s work into periods. Even if the thinker’s ideas did not greatly change over the years, it still makes them feel better to do this. Sometimes there is a sufficient – even indecently large – reason to do this. One thinks of Friedrich Naumann, whom contemporary Germans imagine to have been their greatest "liberal", who went from Christian socialism, to Kaiser-worship, to navalism, to impatient "national-social" reformism, Central European hegemony for Germany, to New World Order internationalism. The only consistent thread is that everywhere and always Naumann was a Schwärmer for massive state intervention into everything. This great "liberal" never understood the first thing about markets, private property, and the lot. One is reminded of our own Max Lerner, whose ideological pratfalls set international standards. Our esteemed neo-conservatives have made the long march from Trotskyism through right-wing social democracy into their present eminence, whence they try to supply what "brains" there are to be found in the Republican Party’s "mainstream."

By such measures, the late Murray Rothbard never changed at all. There is, however, a tendentious standard whereby Rothbard, having observed that the outer world had changed a bit between, say, 1946 and 1992, is burdened with inconsistency or – much worse – a terrible descent into "conservatism." Some fifteen or twenty years ago, one participant in such discussions – Samuel Edward Konkin III of "agorist" fame – began distinguishing between "left-Rothbardianism" (his position) and "right-Rothbardianism" (allegedly Rothbard’s own position at that time). Now we have to hear about "early" versus "late" Rothbard or, even worse – from Chris Sciabarra writing in Critical Review and Liberty – the shocking "one-dimensionality" of Rothbard’s synthesis – Rothbard apparently having never gone to school with Herbert Marcuse. And, of course, there was the little sally from the contrarian editor of Liberty, Mr. Bill Bradford, about historians thinking Rothbard a good economist and economists thinking him a good historian. Anyone who has actually read Murray Rothbard comes away thinking he did rather well in both fields. Compared to the boring twits in history and the dry-as-dust technicians in economics, Rothbard was attempting something very bold: the shaping of an interdisciplinary science of liberty, giving real meaning, one might add, to the largely legless New Left demand for scholarly "relevance."

The Liberal Mind at 50

The liberal mind is profoundly impatient with intangibles

By Theodore Dalrymple

In his autobiography, John Stuart Mill relates the mental crisis that he experienced as a young man when he asked himself whether he would be happy if all the reforms that he thought necessary were granted or achieved. Would they necessarily fulfill him?

The answer, obviously, was ‘No,’ and Mill, having been nothing if not a man of the most complete integrity, suffered a nervous collapse. ‘The end had ceased to charm,’ he wrote, ‘and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to live for.’

Few people, however, are as intelligent or scrupulous as Mill; but like him, they need something to live for. Indeed, the struggle for existence (or subsistence) having been more or less won – how, without a great deal of determination, do you starve in a modern society? – more people than ever before are in search of a meaning in life. In the absence of religious belief, one way of finding such a meaning in life is to attach yourself to a cause, the gaining of which is sufficiently distant to occupy you for years, and yet not totally impossible either. This imparts to you the pleasing glow of righteous transcendence, of doing good and feeling good at the same time.

Professor Minogue’s book, The Liberal Mind, first published fifty years ago this year and reprinted by the Liberty Fund, early recognized this mindset as a mass phenomenon. He appreciated sooner than most the role that victimhood would soon play in the national life of liberal democracies, even (or especially) among people who, objectively-speaking, suffered the least of any generation that had ever lived. The importance of what he calls ‘suffering situations’ is that ‘they convert politics into a crudely conceived moral battleground,’ with oppressors on the one hand and liberators on the other. It turns politics into a Punch and Judy show, the main question becoming who is Punch and who is Judy. Politicians vie to be not holier-than-thou but more-compassionate-than-thou, while continuing, of course, to indulge in all their accustomed knavish tricks.

The Bickering Genocides

Everyone loves Jews as victims. In other roles, not so much

By mark steyn

Justin Bieber, my successor as Canada's teen heartthrob, is currently touring Europe. Passing through Amsterdam, he was taken to visit the Anne Frank House and afterwards signed the guest book. "Anne was a great girl," he wrote. "Hopefully, she would have been a belieber" — the term used by devoted fans of young Justin. Miss Frank did not live to become a belieber because she was shipped off to Belsen concentration camp and died of typhus in 1945. But had she lived I feel it safe to say she would have regarded Justin's oeuvre as complete bilge: As a teenager, she liked Liszt, so she was a beliszter; she belonged to the franz club. Anyway, Justin's poignant message set off a Twitterstorm of criticism at what the Washington Post called "the insensitivity and the sheer ego" of it.

I'm inclined to cut him some slack here. As the years go by, Anne Frank's supposedly inspiring story makes me a little queasy. Europe venerates its dead Jews even as a resurgent anti-Semitism chases out its living ones. Everyone loves Jews as victims. In other roles, not so much.

The Climate’s Right for Whining

California’s wine scare isn’t the first and won’t be the last

by Steven F. Hayward

Climate change has become the all-purpose culprit for seemingly every problem, from AIDS to zoonotic diseases. Just this week, Democrats in the House of Representatives floated a resolution declaring that climate change could lead to increased prostitution. Meanwhile, in California, the press is trumpeting new research predicting doom for the state’s legendary wine industry. “Study: California Can Kiss Its Vineyards Goodbye,” a San Jose Mercury News headline blared last month. Apparently, climate activists think that if they threaten everyone’s favorite pinot noir, we’ll all roll over for their anti-energy agenda—though how much more rolling California can do is unclear, since it has already imposed a go-it-alone cap-and-trade program designed to solve global warming in one state.

The study, published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), is billed as the first worldwide analysis of climate change on wine production. It concludes that a warming world will produce a decline in wine-grape vineyards— as much as 75 percent by 2050—in regions including California, Chile, Argentina, southern Europe, and Australia. The study’s only points of distinction, though, are its purported global scope (which means the margin for error is larger) and its lack of rudimentary knowledge of contemporary winemaking. The great wine scare has been around for quite a while. Spain even hosted an annual “World Conference on Climate Change and Wine,” featuring that well-known climate scientist and oenophile Al Gore, along with former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, though the series seems to have lost its effervescence after its third meeting in 2011. The current PNAS study is not the organization’s first prediction of a dire future for California’s wine industry. “Climate Change May Bring Sour Grapes,” CBS News reported in 2009 of a similar PNAS study. Still another PNAS study from 2006 explored how “Extreme Heat Reduces and Shifts United States Premium Wine Production in the 21st Century.”

The House of Mao is Doing Well

Mao grand-daughter accused over China rich list

By Associated Press

The appearance of a grand-daughter of Mao Zedong, founding father of Communist China, on a list of the country's richest citizens prompted online accusations of hypocrisy Thursday.

Kong Dongmei, now in her early 40s, and husband Chen Dongsheng ranked 242th with personal wealth estimated at five billion yuan ($815 million) on a rich list released this month by New Fortune, a Chinese financial magazine.

Kong is the grand-daughter of Mao and his third wife He Zizhen. In 2001 she founded a book store in Beijing selling publications about Mao and promoting "Red Culture" after studying at the University of Pennsylvania in the US.

In 2011, Kong married Chen, who controls an insurance company, an auction house and a courier firm, after they had maintained an extramarital relationship for 15 years, according to the magazine, which cited other Chinese media reports.

Action Plan to Save Slovenia is Trifecta of Stupidity

Hiking taxes in a recession is the single worst thing a country can do

By Mike "Mish" Shedloc

As Slovenia struggles to avoid an inevitable bailout, it pursues a plan that will instead make the size of the eventual bailout larger.

Please consider the inane  "Action Plan" for Eurozone Straggler Slovenia. 

The new government of struggling eurozone member Slovenia is expected to announce Thursday an action plan aimed at avoiding a bailout, reportedly including privatisations, "crisis" taxes and austerity cuts.

Moody's last week cut its rating on Slovenia two notches to "junk", the economy has been in recession since 2011, unemployment stands at 13.5 percent and voters are fed up with their political leaders.

According to leaked details, Bratusek is eyeing a "crisis" levy of 0.5-5.0 percent on all wages, to hike in 2014 value-added tax (VAT), a tax on property and other measures to boost state revenues.

Trifecta of Stupidity

Is there not one bureaucrat who can be fired? What about changes to work rules to make the country more productive? Is every cent Slovenia spends necessary?

Hiking taxes in a recession is the single worst thing a country can do, yet Slovenia proposes a trio of them. When Slovenia slumps further into the gutter (and it will if they implement even a portion of these proposals), Keynesian clowns will holler "austerity ruined Slovenia".

Nothing could be further from the truth. Tax hikes in a recession are not austerity, they are stupidity, and Slovenia is going for the tax-trifecta of a tax on wages, a hike in the VAT, and a hike on property taxes.

Unemployment, already at 13.5%, will hit 20% if this plan is implemented.         

Looking for Dollars

Argentina – Another Peso Devaluation Imminent?

The Argentine Peso vs. the US dollar over the past decade, official rate

By Pater Tenebrarum

Argentina famously employs 'dollar-sniffing' dogs at its borders to keep its citizens from getting their savings out of the hands of the domestic kleptocracy to a safe haven. After years of soaring inflation, the black market rate of the peso has fallen to about half the official rate. As a result, rumors of an imminent devaluation are growing more pronounced of late.

In a new gambit to get hold of more foreign exchange, Argentina's government is offering people who bring undeclared dollars home an amnesty. This is almost like saying: 'please bring the stuff back for us to steal'. It probably won't work. 

In fact, given the strenuous denials by the government, which insists that there will never – honest injun! – be a devaluation of the peso, it is almost certain that it will be devalued, based on the 'never believe anything until it's been officially denied' principle. In typical government fashion, fingers are wagged in the direction of 'those who want to profit from a devaluation', i.e., it's all the fault of evil speculators.

Meanwhile, president Fernandez-Kirchner has become tainted by a growing scandal over a close friend of her family who apparently shipped dollars out of Argentina by the plane load. As a result, her government is threatened by new political competition from the left (just what Argentina urgently needs: more socialism!).

Here are excerpts from a recent article describing the situation: 

A warning signal for Germany and UK

ECB Ponders Buying Toxic Debt of the Periphery; Don't Worry, It Will Be "Fiscally Neutral" and Temporary

By Mike "Mish" Shedlock

In an effort to stimulate small and medium (SME) lending the ECB considers acquiring banks toxic debt of the periphery. Via mish-modified translate from Spanish Libre Mercado. 

 The European Central Bank (ECB) could "soon" start buying bad debts of Southern European countries in an attempt to end the fragmentation in the eurozone and boost funding to SMEs, as confirmed by the German ECB representative Jörg Asmussen. 

"It's part of the debate on lending to SMEs," Asmussen said when asked about the measure, which was unveiled by the German newspaper Die Welt. The ECB has an "open mind" to do everything "within our mandate" to solve this problem, Asmussen explained in an appearance before the Economic Affairs Committee of the Parliament.

The goal, the German banker continued, is "revive the market asset-backed securities, particularly those backed by loans to SMEs, of course with strict supervision." In any case, the ECB representative stressed that "liquidity is not what is preventing banks from lending" but "the lack of capital." 

Is present monetary policy rational?

Benefits - Costs and everything in between

by DETLEV SCHLICHTER

While the stance of monetary policy around the world has, on any conceivable measure, been extreme, by which I mean unprecedentedly accommodative, the question of whether such a policy is indeed sensible and rationale has not been asked much of late. By rational I simply mean the following: Is this policy likely to deliver what it is supposed to deliver? And if it does fall short of its official aim, then can we at least state with some certainty that whatever it delivers in benefits is not outweighed by its costs? I think that these are straightforward questions and that any policy that is advertised as being in ‘the interest of the general public’ should pass this test. As I will argue in the following, the present stance of monetary policy only has a negligible chance, at best, of ever fulfilling its stated aim. Furthermore, its benefits are almost certainly outweighed by its costs if we list all negative effects of this policy and do not confine ourselves, as the present mainstream does, to just one obvious cost: official consumer price inflation, which thus far remains contained. Thus, in my view, there is no escaping the fact that this policy is not rational. It should be abandoned as soon as possible.

The policy and its aims

The key planks of this policy are super low interest rates and targeted purchases (or collateralized funding) of financial assets by central banks. While various regional differences exist in respect of the extent of these programs and the assets chosen, all major central banks – the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan – have been engaged and continue to be committed to versions of this policy. Its purpose is to facilitate exceptionally cheap funding for banks and to affect the pricing of a wide range of financial assets, in particular and most directly government bonds but also mortgage bonds in the US and real-estate investment trusts and corporate securities in Japan. There is an ongoing debate in the UK and in the Euro Zone, too, about directly boosting prices of other, ‘private’ securities, that is, to have their prices manipulated upwards by direct purchases from the central banks.

The new EU directive: quit smoking or die

New rules from Brussels effectively banning low-risk alternatives to cigarettes, like e-cigs, will cost lives

by Rob Lyons 

In December 2012, the EU’s executive, the European Commission, announced its proposals to revise the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), originally passed in 2001, to take account of ‘significant scientific, market and international developments’ that have taken place since. But far from improving Europeans’ health, the proposals as they stand could well lead to many thousands, perhaps millions, of unnecessary early deaths.

In a press release announcing the revision, the EU’s commissioner in charge of health and consumer policy, Tonio Borg, declared: ‘With 70 per cent of smokers starting before the age of 18, the ambition of today’s proposal is to make tobacco products and smoking less attractive and thus discourage tobacco initiation among young people.’ So, for example, the revised directive would provide for some pretty run-of-the-mill tobacco-control measures like bigger health warnings, something likely to be ineffective in persuading smokers to quit - and quite possibly attractive to young people looking for a way to ‘rebel’.

There would also be bans on the use of ‘characterising flavours’ with tobacco products. That would mean an end to menthol cigarettes, on the untested presumption that flavoured products make it easier for young people to get into smoking. In reality, flavoured cigarettes are not wildly popular. Even accounting for menthol, by far the most popular of these flavours, they make up just five per cent of the cigarette market.

Defending the right to mock JM Keynes

Why on earth is historian Niall Ferguson being dragged over the coals for having a pop at a dead economist?

by Tim Black 

I’ll tell you what is really shocking about Niall Ferguson, Harvard professor of history, author of countless forgettable books, and sometime man-ont’-telly. It’s that so many insist on considering him some sort of towering intellect, be it Time magazine, which put him in its ‘top 100 most influential people in the world today’, or Prospect, which did something similar in terms of global thinkers. If ever there was an indictment of the contemporary world of thought, it’s that: the thoughtless elevation of this spectacularly vain shock-jockademic.

But I’ll also tell you what’s not shocking: Ferguson’s less than admirable view of prominent twentieth-century economist, and famed Bloomsbury Groupie, John Maynard Keynes. Yet that is precisely what twisted quite a few right-thinking knickers over the weekend and even prompted an ‘unqualified apology’ from the not-so-great man himself.

The phoney border war over immigration

The fallout from the Queen’s Speech confirms that today neither right nor left views immigrants as real, breathing human beings

by Brendan O’Neill 

The fuss that followed yesterday’s Queen’s Speech reveals what a weird turn the debate about immigration has taken. In the past, the clash over migrants’ rights tended to pit border-fortifying nationalistic types against left-leaners who believed in the right of foreigners to move around the globe and work and live in various places. Today, if the reaction to PM David Cameron’s proposed new immigration measures is anything to go by, there’s little more than a pseudo-spat over immigration, with hamstrung anti-immigrant politicians on one side and a ‘pro-immigration’ lobby that is increasingly elitist on the other. What’s most striking is how neither side treats immigrants as actual human beings, the anti-immigrant side treating them as spectres of destabilisation and the pro-immigrant lot treating them as the ciphers for a new, post-borders, shallowly cosmopolitan political dawn.

Cameron’s proposals, ironically unveiled by our German-descended queen, led to outraged headlines about how he was pandering to xenophobic attitudes and taking Britain back to the bad old days of immigrant-bashing. In truth, the most remarkable thing about his plans is how chaotic they are, and also how much they concede in terms of the security of Britain’s borders. Cameron is proposing effectively to outsource authority over immigration to various non-state actors. Landlords will be charged with checking the immigration status of their tenants, and will face fines if they let their properties to illegal migrants. Employers will have to check passports and papers or risk getting a severe slap on the wrists for ‘hiring illegal workers’. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency will have to ensure that only legit immigrants get driving licences.

'All Will Profit from New Wave of Immigrants'

World from Berlin

By Daryl Lindsey

This week, Germany announced it received more immigrants in 2012 than it has in almost two decades. Yet rather than sounding the alarm, newspaper commentators are welcoming the trend. Most of the newcomers are well-educated and come from other countries in Europe.

The trend has been building for some time. As the economic downturn in Southern Europe tightens its grip, increasing numbers of people are heading north -- many to Germany -- looking for work. On Tuesday, Germany announced that almost a million foreigners came to Germany in 2012, more than have arrived in any year since 1995. Furthermore, the preliminary figures indicate that last year saw a 15 percent jump in immigration over 2011.

The last time the country saw waves of immigration this large was during the Balkan wars in the late 1990s and at the peak of the guest worker movement during the 1970s, which saw hundreds of thousands of Turks, Greeks, Spaniards and Italians move to Germany.

The majority of the newcomers are leaving behind countries in impoverished southeastern Europe or debt-crisis plagued euro-zone countries in Southern Europe, where joblessness is rampant, particularly among youth.

German Central Bank Head Blasts France

'Can't Call That Savings'

By Spiegel

German central bank head Jens Weidmann has strongly criticized French efforts to reduce its budget deficit, just days after the European Union granted Paris more time to meet EU requirements. He warns that French delays could damage the credibility of euro-zone rules.

France needs more time to get its budget deficit under control. That much was made clear last Friday when the European Commission announced it was granting Paris until 2015 to bring its budget deficit below the maximum 3 percent of gross domestic product allowed by European Union rules ensuring the stability of the euro.

But on Wednesday evening, Jens Weidmann, the president of Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, said he is adamantly opposed to the move. "You can't call that savings, as far as I am concerned," he told the daily Westdeutsche Allegemeine Zeitung in an interview. "To win back trust, we can't just establish rules and then promise to fulfil them at some point in the future. They have to be filled with life," Weidmann said.

France had originally hoped to reduce its budget deficit below the 3 percent limit this year, but with its economy suffering, the deficit is likely to be closer to 4 percent and slightly higher in 2014.

The Number Of US Citizens On Disability Is Now Larger Than The Population Of Greece

There are only 13 Americans working full-time for each worker on disability

By Jim Quinn's 

The number of people on SSDI now exceeds the entire population of Greece. The aging of the population has nothing to do with the increase. In 1968 there were 51 workers for every person on disability. Today there are 13 workers for every person on disablity. Even the most pollyanna would agree that medical advancements since 1968 have been significant. These medical advancements would argue for less people being on disability and unable to work.

Workplace safety measures have been increased exponentially since 1968, so that also argues for less disabled workers. The good old ADA law forced all workplaces to become disabled friendly. That argues for less people on disability. The country has transitioned from a manufacturing society to a service society. Workers don’t work on dangerous assembly lines anymore. Robots do the dangerous stuff. This should have dramatically reduced worker injuries and disabilities.

Cosmetic Surgeries Skyrocket in Greece

Crisis Lifting

By Kerstin Kullmann

The economic crisis has forced thousands in Greece to rely on volunteers for even basic health care services. Meanwhile, wealthier Greeks are having more facelifts and breast implants than anywhere in the world. Why?

In Glyfada, an upper-income suburb of Athens with palm-lined streets and a view of the Mediterranean, cosmetic surgeon Athanasios Athanasiou presents his latest accomplishment. A flawlessly beautiful woman wearing a tight-fitting tracksuit and sporting a bobbing ponytail walks into the room, dangling her car keys from her right hand. Athanasiou says: "A complete mommy makeover." He laughs, and the woman laughs along with him. She sits down and says: "Oh, Athi."

The woman prefers not to mention her name because she is a well-known TV personality in Greece. She says that after having her second child, she had Athanasiou perform many cosmetic enhancement procedures: adding new silicon to her breasts, a tummy tuck, liposuction, a lip enhancement, Botox and hyaluronic acid filler treatments and laser procedures. She adds that she has been going to a cosmetic surgeon for almost 20 years, but that the quality of the work has improved considerably in recent years. "I don't want it to be too extreme," she says. "It should look natural. Athi knows how to do that." And now she is looking forward to her birthday. She turns 45 in a week.