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Gene Ellis

Amid Rows of Tin Shacks, a Luxury Hotel Rises - Slide Show - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...20131209-KLIPTOWN.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 18 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Amid Rows of Tin Shacks, a Luxury Hotel Rises
Gene Ellis

Germany and EU row over energy subsidies - FT.com - 0 views

www.ft.com/...29-11e3-8ca9-00144feab7de.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 05 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Germany and EU row over energy subsidies
  • The dispute relates to the billions of euros of German public subsidies deployed to promote the energiewende shift to renewables while at the same time shielding heavy industry from the costs
  • Germany plans to generate up to 60 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2035, as part of a radical shift in energy supply which involves a complete exit from nuclear power. The expansion of clean energy has been encouraged by a generous system of subsidies paid to renewables operators. These have been funded by surcharges that have left Germany with some of the highest household electricity bills in Europe.
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  • There is nothing new in the need to address possible discrimination of imported electricity by Germany,” he said. “If consumers have to pay a surcharge on their consumption of both domestic and imported electricity but revenue from the surcharge is used to only finance domestic electricity producers, there is a risk that imported electricity is disadvantaged and made comparatively more expensive.”
Gene Ellis

Monarch Migration Plunges to Lowest Level in Decades - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...o-lowest-level-in-decades.html

monarch migration lowest level decades

shared by Gene Ellis on 14 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • But an equally alarming source of the decline, both Mr. Taylor and Mr. Vidal said, is the explosive increase in American farmland planted in soybean and corn genetically modified to tolerate herbicides. The American Midwest’s corn belt is a critical feeding ground for monarchs, which once found a ready source of milkweed growing between the rows of millions of acres of soybean and corn. But the ubiquitous use of herbicide-tolerant crops has enabled farmers to wipe out the milkweed, and with it much of the butterflies’ food supply.
  • Gene Ellis on 14 Mar 13
     
    unintended consequences of GM crops
Gene Ellis

"The Euro's Latest Reprieve" by Joseph E. Stiglitz | Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...the-euro-s-latest-reprieve

shared by Gene Ellis on 10 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Like an inmate on death row, the euro has received another last-minute stay of execution. It will survive a little longer. The markets are celebrating, as they have after each of the four previous “euro crisis” summits – until they come to understand that the fundamental problems have yet to be addressed.
  • Europe’s leaders have finally understood that the bootstrap operation by which Europe lends money to the banks to save the sovereigns, and to the sovereigns to save the banks, will not work.
  • Likewise, they now recognize that bailout loans that give the new lender seniority over other creditors worsen the position of private investors, who will simply demand even higher interest rates.CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraph
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • It is deeply troubling that it took Europe’s leaders so long to see something so obvious
  • What is now proposed is recapitalization of the European Investment Bank, part of a growth package of some $150 billion. But politicians are good at repackaging, and, by some accounts, the new money is a small fraction of that amount, and even that will not get into the system immediately. In short: the remedies – far too little and too late – are based on a misdiagnosis of the problem and flawed economics.
  • Eurobonds and a solidarity fund could promote growth and stabilize the interest rates faced by governments in crisis. Lower interest rates, for example, would free up money so that even countries with tight budget constraints could spend more on growth-enhancing investments.
  • Even well-managed banking systems would face problems in an economic downturn of Greek and Spanish magnitude; with the collapse of Spain’s real-estate bubble, its banks are even more at risk.
  • Europe’s leaders did not recognize this rising danger, which could easily be averted by a common guarantee, which would simultaneously correct the market distortion arising from the differential implicit subsidy.
  • The euro was flawed from the outset, but it was clear that the consequences would become apparent only in a crisis.
  • Workers may leave Ireland or Greece not because their productivity there is lower, but because, by leaving, they can escape the debt burden incurred by their parents.
  • Germany worries that, without strict supervision of banks and budgets, it will be left holding the bag for its more profligate neighbors. But that misses the key point: Spain, Ireland, and many other distressed countries ran budget surpluses before the crisis. The down
  • turn caused the deficits, not the other way around.CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraph
  • If these countries made a mistake, it was only that, like Germany today, they were overly credulous of markets, so they (like the United States and so many others) allowed an asset bubble to grow unchecked.
  • Moreover, Germany is on the hook in either case: if the euro or the economies on the periphery collapse, the costs to Germany will be high.
  • While structural problems have weakened competitiveness and GDP growth in particular countries, they did not bring about the crisis, and addressing them will not resolve it.CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraph
Gene Ellis

Colm McCarthy: The eurozone is still at risk and we need to get our house in order - An... - 0 views

www.independent.ie/...ur-house-in-order-3168399.html

syndicate

shared by Gene Ellis on 15 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Friday's two-notch downgrade of Italy by ratings agency Moody's explicitly mentions default risk and eurozone fracturing.
  • History teaches that muddle rather than conspiracy lies behind even the greatest turning points and the doubters are being too quick on the draw.
  • accompanied by some rowing back from the apparently significant decisions taken at the summit on June 28 and 29.
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  • These thoughts are spurred by the rather weak communique, which followed the meeting earlier last week of eurogroup finance ministers in Brussels,
  • There is, as yet, no mechanism in place to ensure bond market support to Spain and Italy and nobody, except the ECB, has the funds to keep their governments funded, should they be forced from the market. The ECB has suspended its bond-buying programme so the high-wire act continues, without a safety net.
  • The eurozone could face a major crisis at short notice if either country experiences serious trouble selling government paper, which both must do in large volume and on a continuing basis.
  • The avoidance of default on the core sovereign debt, the debt undertaken without duress by the Irish State, is a legitimate objective of national policy.
  • It had become clear, early in 2010, that the blanket bank guarantee would bankrupt the Irish State, and the Government finally began to acknowledge that haircuts for senior, but unsecured, bank bondholders had become unavoidable.
  • As far as I am aware, this is the first time in the history of central banking that a sovereign state has been compelled, to the point of national insolvency, and by its own central bank (by our Government's choice, the ECB), to make whole those who foolishly purchased bonds issued by private banks, which had gone bust and been closed down.
Gene Ellis

Flammkuchen mit Bacon Recipe - 0 views

germanfood.about.com/...chen-Recipe-Alsatian-Pizza.htm

shared by Gene Ellis on 05 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Flammkuchen Recipe - Alsatian Pizza
Gene Ellis

Europe has to do whatever it takes - FT.com - 0 views

www.ft.com/...49-11e4-8472-00144feabdc0.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 05 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • 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.
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  • Huge divergences in competitiveness remain
  • This is forcing vulnerable countries into deflation, which raises the real level of their debt.
  • Furthermore, it is clear that the ECB would be taking on credit risk. It would be charged with monetary financing of governments. I believe it should go ahead. But the row between northern and southern Europe would surely be deafening.
  • It also hopes that, through this and other programmes it has announced, it will be able to expand its balance sheet
  • back to where it was two years ago.
  • Moreover, the range of measures taken reinforce the ECB’s forward guidance. It has locked itself into ultra-accommodative monetary policies for years, as it should.
  • this year Germany’s current account surplus might be as big as 8 per cent of gross domestic product.
  • What else is left? One possibility, suggested in Mr Draghi’s speech, is active use of fiscal policy.
Gene Ellis

Is Europe's gas supply threatened by the Ukraine crisis? | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...raine-crisis-russsia-pipelines

shared by Gene Ellis on 04 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Is Europe's gas supply threatened by the Ukraine crisis?
  • more than a quarter of the EU's total gas needs were met by Russian gas, and some 80% of it came via Ukrainian pipelines. Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Poland soon reported gas pressure in their own pipelines was down by as much as 30%.
  • While it was eventually resolved through a complex deal that saw Ukraine buying gas from Russia (at full price) and Turkmenistan (at cut price) via a Swiss-registered Gazprom subsidiary
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  • But three years later, the same row erupted again: Gazprom demanded a price hike to $400-plus from $250, Kiev flatly refused, and on New Year's day 2009, Gazprom began pumping only enough gas to meet the needs of its customers beyond Ukraine.
  • Again, the consequences were marked. Inevitably, Russia accused Ukraine of siphoning off supplies meant for European customers to meet its own needs, and cut supplies completely
  • several countries – particularly in south-eastern Europe, almost completely dependent on supplies from Ukraine – simply ran out of gas.
  • Bulgaria shut down production in its main industrial plants; Slovakia declared a state of emergency
  • Many industry experts, though, point out that the world has changed since 2009, and that there are any number of reasons why Moscow's natural gas supplies may not prove quite the potent economic and diplomatic weapon they once were.
  • higher than normal temperatures are forecast to continue for several weeks yet, significantly reducing demand for gas and leaving prices at their lowest for two years
  • since the first "gas war" of 2006, many European countries have made huge efforts to increase their gas storage capacity and stocks are high. Some countries, such as Bulgaria, Slovakia and Moldova, which lack large storage capacity and depend heavily on gas supplies via Ukraine, would certainly suffer from any disruption in supplies
  • New Gazprom pipelines via Belarus and the Baltic Sea to Germany (Nord Stream) have cut the proportion of Gazprom's Europe-bound exports that transit via Ukraine to around half the total, meaning only about 15% of Europe's gas now relies on Ukraine's pipelines. Gazprom is also planning a Black Sea pipeline (South Stream), expected in 2015, meaning its exports to Europe will bypass Ukraine completely. Ukraine itself has cut its domestic gas consumption by nearly 40% over the past few years, halving its imports from Russia in the process.
  • Europe is increasingly installing specialist terminals that will allow gas to be imported from countries such as Qatar in the form of liquefied natural gas – while Norway's Statoil sold more gas to European countries in 2012 than Gazprom did. "Since the Russian supply cuts of 2006 and 2009, the tables have totally turned," Anders åslund, an energy advisor to both the Russian and Ukrainian governments, told the Washington Post.
  • Europe accounts for around a third of Gazprom's total gas sales, and around half of Russia's total budget revenue comes from oil and gas. Moscow needs that source of revenue, and whatever Vladimir Putin's geo-political ambitions, most energy analysts seem to agree he will think twice about jeopardising it.
Gene Ellis

Irish Charm With Germans Leads Nation Out of Bailout Wilderness - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...-german-love-ends-bailout.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 13 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Before the new government could go on the offensive, it needed to play defense. It fended off an attack on Ireland’s 12.5 percent corporate tax rate, the cornerstone of an economic policy that transformed Ireland from a financial backwater into a European hub for companies such as Pfizer Inc., the maker of Viagra, and Google Inc.
  • Two days after commencing his premiership, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, 62, became embroiled in what he called a Gallic spat with French President Nicolas Sarkozy after refusing to raise the tax rate in return for an interest-rate cut on aid.
  • “The attitude was: ‘You misbehaved and here’s what you have to do’,’”
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  • Within months, the central bank injected more than 1 trillion euros of three-year loans into the region’s banking system
  • Banks used the cash to buy sovereign debt
  • Noonan then ramped up his efforts to broker a deal on banking debt. He had a consistent line: it was payback time. The government hadn’t imposed losses on senior bank bondholders, preventing contagion spreading across the euro region from the Irish banking crisis.
  • The economy emerged from recession in the second quarter, unemployment dropped for six months in a row, and house prices in Dublin are rising again. The yield on 10-year bonds is down to 3.5 percent, lower than Italy and Spain.
  • “The Germans disagree all the time until the very end, and then they agree,” he said. “Once you realize that, you keep talking, you keep chipping away.”
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