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Russia Steps Up Economic Pressure on Kiev

Russia is now asking close to $500 for 1,000 cubic meters of gas, the standard unit for gas trade in Europe, which is a price about a third higher than what Russia’s gas company, Gazprom, charges clients elsewhere. Russia says the increase is justified because it seized control of the Crimean Peninsula, where its Black Sea naval fleet is stationed, ending the need to pay rent for the Sevastopol base. The base rent had been paid in the form of a $100 per 1,000 cubic meter discount on natural gas for Ukraine’s national energy company, Naftogaz.

Mr. Yatsenyuk raised the pressing need to build an interconnector pipe allowing for a so-called reverse flow from the European Union into the Ukrainian gas system. “We need reverse flows of gas from the European Union to support Ukraine’s energy security,” Mr. Yatsenyuk said.

Unemployed in Europe Hobbled by Lack of Technology Skills

An Aging Europe in Decline

The problem with TTIP

The TPP is a deep international integration arrangement between the US and 11 other Pacific states, which would cover 40% of world GDP and over 30% of world trade. It seeks to address as series of issues that 21st century commerce, but arguably its most obvious feature is that it excludes China – the world’s largest international trader and before long the world’s largest economy. There are, of course, the ritual genuflections towards ‘open regionalism’ – China can join if only it will agree to the necessary policy requirements – but this is about as much use as saying the Chief Rabbi can dine with you while insisting that the menu contains pork.

By signing TTIP Europe would be tying itself to a static rather than a dynamic part of the world economy and substantially reinforcing the US’s exclusionary policies.

Europe Fears Banks Lack Cash Cushion to Cover Bad Loans

Europe has to do whatever it takes By Martin Wolf

Astonishingly, yields on Italian and Spanish 10-year debt have fallen from 6.3 per cent and 7.0 per cent, respectively, at the beginning of August 2012, to a mere 2.3 and 2.1 per cent early this month. That is below the yield on UK gilts.

Fiscal policy also continues to tighten, even though interest rates are at the zero bound: the OECD has forecast that the cyclically adjusted fiscal deficit of the eurozone would shrink from a mere 1.4 per cent in 2013 to an even more austere 0.9 per cent in 2014.

The other driving schools have sued them, saying their innovations break the rules.

partly because getting a driver’s license here is so difficult and expensive that it has inspired books on the subject,

their struggle highlights how the myriad rules governing driving schools — and 36 other highly regulated professions — stifle competition and inflate prices in France.

Nobel economists say policy blunders pushing Europe into depression

Europe risks ‘significant’ gas shortages this winter

Eastern European nations are working on ambitious plans to develop terminals to import liquefied natural gas but these will not be ready by the winter.

George Soros: Russia Could Default & Disrupt Global Markets; Europe Must Rescue Ukraine

Why Europe needs two euros, not one

The gas flowing into Ukraine as of Monday was meant only to transit the country to Europe. “Gazprom supplies to Ukraine only the amount that has been paid for, and the amount that has been paid for is zero,” Gazprom’s spokesman, Sergei Kupriyanov, told reporters.

Gazprom, which has sought for the past decade to convince the Europeans that it is a reliable supplier and not an arm of Russian foreign policy, painted the dispute as strictly commercial.

Second, Gazprom has provoked economic ire in Europe over its plans to build an alternative gas route under the Black Sea for the company’s exclusive use, contradicting Europe’s open access laws. That has put the future of what is known as the South Stream pipeline in doubt.

Bureaucratic France has 90 public-sector staff per 1,000 people compared to 50 in Germany. Most enjoy almost total job security.

France’s serial requests are treated as duplicitous by those who ask why big countries break rules that smaller ones have to obey (a game that first began when France and Germany bust the stability pact in 2002). The Hollande government has already been given one delay

Another would mark the third time in seven years that France has missed targets.

Could Europe lose Greece to Russia?

“The current- account deficits of countries that have been under stress diminished over the last years considerably.”

Just two of 14 euro-zone government leaders have kept their posts in elections since late 2009 and extremists such as Golden Dawn in Greece are gaining support.

“The internal rebalancing in the euro area is progressing,” said Fels. “Some of them, especially Spain but also Portugal not to speak of Ireland, are regaining competitiveness.”