Standard & Poor’s has cut its outlook to “negative” from “stable” on seven major Canadian financial institutions including Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion Bank and Bank of Nova Scotia, attributing the change to soaring consumer debt levels and the increasingly fragile global economy.
h/t LAS
Unexpectedly – The UK economy has shrunk by a shock 0.7pc in the second quarter…
Because most Western governments are insolvent, fiscal policy is dead. They maxed out their taxing power a long time ago and have been borrowing ever since. When it comes to the economy, governments are a spent force.
This has put central banks in charge, and they basically do one thing only: they print money. If all you have is hammer, everything looks like a nail, so central banks naturally think the world’s problem is a lack of money, which they are busily solving.
The problem is, a lack of money is not the problem, it’s solvency, and part of the reason for that is too much money, or rather, too much credit.
h/t Mike
The World’s Agricultural Problems Are Much Bigger Than The Drought In The US
h/t Xiat
Via John Mauldin (free subscription);
“We are monitoring the BROAD rise in Youth Unemployment Rates, across the EU (this March, versus March of last year):
— Bulgaria … 32.8% … up from 26.7%
— Portugal … 36.1% … up from 27.6%
— Denmark … 15.1% … up from 13.7%
— Ireland … 30.3% … up from 28.7%
— Cyprus … 28.8% … up from 18.8%
— Hungary … 28.8% … up from 25.4%
— Netherlands … 9.3% … up from 6.9%
— Poland … 26.7% … up from 25.7%
— Slovenia … 16.5% … up from 16.3%
Related; Our cultured cousins, the Europeans — role models for higher Dems — hate math. So last weekend they voted against it.
“UK Slides Back Into Recession in First Double Dip Since 1970s” … “unexpectedly”.
Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
April 23rd, 2012 – ‘The War on Terror Is Over’
April 24th, 2012 – Map of Domestic Drone Authorizations
Via Drudge.
The technical suspension of trading to be extended
The situation has been recognized as an emergency. Further actions will be announced shortly.
Via Zerohedge. (h/t Doowleb)
Publius cuts through the Imperial Capital (T.O. that be) crap:
…Where most of the key media outlets are located, downtown Toronto, is certainly a centre-left kind of place…
…With the exception of cottage country the WASPs who rule the Toronto media, and they are still mostly WASPs, have little knowledge of Canada beyond the city limits. Their grandparents might have come from Truro but their eyes are fixed on New York, London and Shanghai. They don’t reflect Canada to Canadians. They reflect themselves to Canadians…
If the issue was put plainly to Canadians, removed from our national obsession with the United States, I doubt the defenders of Medicare would have much of a chance. But no one has put that issue plainly to Canadians, at least with the advantage of a national audience…
How is Canada a centre-left country? Because our political, educational and media elite tell us we are so. The pre-Pearson Canada was not a vast commune. The runner-up at the 1968 Liberal Party convention, Robert Winters, was to the Right of Stephen Harper today…
Heck, read it all–and the “Comments”.
When money moves from one country to another, the central bank of the receiving sovereign must lend an offsetting amount to its counterpart in the source country — a mechanism that keeps the currency union’s accounts in balance. The Bank of Spain, for example, ends up owing the Bundesbank when Spanish depositors move their euros to German banks. By looking at the changes in such cross-border claims, we can figure out how much money is leaving which euro nation and where it’s going.
This analysis suggests that capital flight is happening on a scale unprecedented in the euro era — mainly from Spain and Italy to Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg (see chart). In March alone, about 65 billion euros left Spain for other euro- zone countries. In the seven months through February, the relevant debts of the central banks of Spain and Italy increased by 155 billion euros and 180 billion euros, respectively. Over the same period, the central banks of Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg saw their corresponding credits to other euro- area central banks grow by about 360 billion euros.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office is getting an “indefinite delivery” of an “indefinite quantity” of .40 caliber ammunition from defense contractor ATK.
U.S. agents will receive a maximum of 450 million rounds over five years, according to a press release on the deal.
Related – THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, THEY’D BE SHUTTING DOWN RESEARCH IN THE NAME OF NATIONAL SECURITY. And they were right!
Case-Shiller falls in January;
Home prices in the U.S. fell for the fifth month in a row in January to the lowest level since early 2003, a closely followed index showed on Tuesday. The S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city composite index fell 0.8%. The three-month rolling index includes transactions that took place from November to January…
He offered nothing further but the implication was that big players believed that the one stable and solvent European nation, the nation that was supposed to bail out the others was sitting on a time bomb of its own. Which would mean that Germany, the nation that liked to lecture others about lying, was lying. Lying about a potential trillion euro hole in its banks.
h/t Melinda Romanoff
On March 16th, President Obama signed a new Executive Order which expands upon a prior order issued in 1950 for Disaster Preparedness, and gives the office of the President complete control over all the resources in the United States in times of war or emergency.
The National Defense Resources Preparedness order gives the Executive Branch the power to control and allocate energy, production, transportation, food, and even water resources by decree under the auspices of national defense and national security. The order is not limited to wartime implementation, as one of the order’s functions includes the command and control of resources in peacetime determinations.
Text here.
Via Uncle Meat.
Update – More on the “National Defense Resources Preparedness” EO from Ed Morrissey
Via John Mauldin;
“As manageable as Spain’s public debt would appear to be at face value, her private debt is an altogether different story – standing at a staggering 227% of GDP and, according to McKinsey, Spanish corporations hold twice as much debt relative to their output as US companies and, in comparison to Germany, that number goes up to six times….
“As Spain reduced its deficit in accordance with the EU’s Growth & Stability Pact, it meant an increasing reliance on private debt was needed in order to prolong the enormous construction boom that had been ongoing in Spain since the 1970s but which really picked up steam in the 90s and 00s. The outcome of that reliance? A tripling of average household debt.”
Throw in the part about the Spanish unemployment rate skyrocketing toward the 25% mark this year (and twice that for those under 25) and the bit where the new Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, draws a line in the sand by unexpectedly announcing that his government’s budget deficit would be 5.8% of GDP in 2012, more than 30 percent higher than the 4.4% agreed on with his supposed masters in Brussels, and we have all the makings for quite a spicy little paella.
(Free subscription required)
Known for his grasp of budgetary minutiae, first as a Michigan congressman and then as Reagan’s budget director, Stockman still dazzles with his command of numbers. Ask him about jobs, and he’ll spit out government estimates for non-farm payrolls down to the tenth of a decimal point. Prod him again and, as from a grim pinata, more figures spill out: personal consumption expenditures, credit market debt and the clunky sounding but all-important non-residential fixed investment.
Stockman may seem as exciting as an insurance actuary, but he knows how to tell a good story. And the punch line to this one is gripping. He says the numbers for the U.S. don’t add up to anything but a painful, slow-growing future.
h/t Harry
America’s per capita government debt worse than Greece.
(h/t EBD)
