You can’t find anything “made in Russia”- what they are good at is “destroyed by Russians”

Date: 13-11-2014
Source: NEWSWEEK
Subject: Civilian Flights at Risk From Putin’s ‘Invisible’ Fighters

No sooner does Mikhail Gorbachev declare that the world is “on the brink” of a new Cold War than a report accuses Russia of putting civilian lives at risk from its “aggressive” and “highly disturbing” military tactics.

The European Leadership Network (ELN), a London-based think tank, claims that some Russian military planes have declined to use transponders to identify their positions when they are on forays into European airspace and therefore can not be detected by air traffic controllers.

The report details tensions prompted by the Ukraine crisis and concludes that it “adds up to a highly disturbing picture of violations of national airspace, emergency scrambles, narrowly avoided mid-air collisions, close encounters at sea and other dangerous actions happening on a regular basis over a very wide geographical area”.

Who is going to stop these banksters? Not the UK

Date: 25-10-2014
Source: NewsWeek
Subject: Over Half of Europe’s Bankers Bypass the EU Bonus Cap

“This is an attempt to knock London off its perch,” declared the colourful Conservative mayor, Boris Johnson. “We’re not going to let it happen.” And that, in effect, is how the political game over the European Union’s cap on bankers’ bonuses has played out so far, after 18 months of rhetoric, legal argument and financial ingenuity.

A measure introduced by the European Parliament, with the declared aim of reducing risk in the financial sector – and the undeclared aim, perhaps, of punishing bankers for their role in the financial crisis and subsequent lack of remorse – stands accused by its targets, the bankers, of increasing risk and instability in their businesses.

Johnson has called it “possibly the most deluded measure to come from Europe since Diocletian tried to fix the price of groceries across the Roman Empire . . . it’s not just hostile to the greatest financial centre on earth. It’s hostile to growth across the EU. The most this measure can hope to achieve is a boost for Zurich and Singapore and New York at the expense of a struggling EU.” Lack of UK political support for the cap has meanwhile encouraged banks in London to make no secret of their use of pay mechanisms that circumvent it.

Germany: Angst, Torture, and the Reluctant Leadership of Europe

Date: 06-10-2014
Source: NewsWeek By Stephen Green

Between the 75th anniversary of the start of the Second World War and the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we examine Germany’s profound lessons for the developed world in the second of our Newsweek Essays. The author, Stephen Green, was chairman of the world’s second largest bank, HSBC, and served as the UK’s minister for trade and investment until 2013.

What do you call the country that sits at the heart of Europe, which is its biggest and strongest economy, and which increasingly calls the tune in the European Union? Not its leader. You can’t translate that word into German without making Germans wince – it still conjures up the nightmare of the Führer. Not the hegemon of Europe – a word sometimes hurled at Germany by Mediterranean politicians, who rail against what they see as its puritanical demands for eurozone austerity. Hegemony – the indirect rule exercised by one city-state over another in Greek antiquity – hardly does justice to two key hallmarks of the modern Germany: its consensualism, and its deep commitment to its own integration within the “ever-closer union” envisaged for the EU by its treaties.

A better image for the new Germany in the new Europe is that of a reluctant Meister.

Meister. The word conveys a sense of respect due to experienced excellence, which knows the secrets of success and leads by example. It has its roots in the world of commerce: the Meister has served one of those famous German apprentice­ships and is the honoured master of the craft. But also in culture: it is the Meister who conjures up the music from the orchestra. Now Germany is also the Weltmeister – the world champion – of the world’s favourite sport.

Why Europe’s Super Rich Are Resorting to Smuggling Cash

Date: 21-09-2014
Source: NewsWeek

The man was sweating on the platform of the train station. Beads of perspiration dappled his forehead as he clutched his briefcase to his chest. For the plainclothes inspectors of French customs watching him at the Gare du Nord in Paris, he seemed a prime suspect in the latest crime wave sweeping a continent wracked by financial discord – cash smuggling.

Sure enough, a quick search of Boris Boillon’s briefcase turned up the contraband – €350,000 – in mostly €500 notes, which customs officers across Europe call “Bin Ladens” because they are the favourite currency of terrorists.

But it is not only terrorists moving them around countries, continents and time zones; it is the cash-strapped middle classes and a wealthy elite desperate to keep their savings from the claws of the taxman.

Boillon, a former ambassador to Iraq and Tunisia and the holder of a Legion of Honour medal, is but one of the “cash commuters” now being targeted by law enforcement across Europe.  Police in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Switzerland are investing in training dogs not to root out narcotics but the precise kind of ink and chemicals used in banknotes.

The catalyst for this extraordinary wave of illicit money-movement is the decision by banks in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Monaco to water down the age-old rules of secrecy governing accounts held by foreigners.

The Art of Financial Warfare: How the West is pushing Putin’s buttons

Date: 24-04-2014
Source: Newsweek

“We found out by Twitter,” an executive at Gunvor Group Ltd., the world’s fourth-largest oil trading firm, told Newsweek.

It was midday on March 20 when the executive, sitting at his office computer in Geneva, glanced up at the screen and got a jolt: A tweet had popped up saying one of the company’s founders, Gennady Timchenko, a billionaire Russian businessman, had been placed on a U.S. government blacklist, along with 31 other people and businesses said to be linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The previous day, Timchenko had finalized the sale of his 43.59 percent stake in Gunvor to his business partner, Torbjörn Törnqvist, a Swedish oil trader, the firm’s other co-founder and now its chief executive.

The two men conducted the transaction amid escalating tensions over Putin’s push into the Crimea region of Ukraine because “they saw the writing on the wall,” the executive explained, adding that “we weren’t tipped off” about the blacklist.

Gunvor had a narrow escape, and the message was heard loud and clear around the world: The first salvo in modern warfare is likely to be financial—and the result is increasingly effective.   

“Fifteen years ago, the idea that the Treasury Department would be at the center of our national security would have been inconceivable,” Daniel Glaser, assistant secretary for terrorist financing at Treasury, said in an interview. “But we have developed a whole new set of tools to put at the president’s disposal.”

Why Thomas Jefferson Favored Profit Sharing

Date: 05-02-2014
Source: NewsWeek

The Founding Fathers feared inequality would doom America, and knew what to do about it

President Obama’s State of the Union speech last week focused on America’s severe and growing inequality, but he stopped short of repeating the Founding Fathers’ many warnings that this condition could doom American democracy.

The founders, despite decades of rancorous disagreements about almost every other aspect of their grand experiment, agreed that America would survive and thrive only if there was widespread ownership of land and businesses.

Italiano? Nein. A Part of Italy Wants Out

Date: 20-01-2014
Source: NewsWeek

In the Italian South Tyrol, German speakers long for when they were part of Austria

In Italy’s Alps, at the border with Austria, there’s a land where people speak in German and dream of independence.

Once part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, it was annexed by Italy at the end of World War I. But even today, not a single drop of Italian blood runs through the veins of its more than 500,000 inhabitants.

They feel and simply are still Austro-German. If a Neapolitan or Roman, but even a Florentine, pops up asking for directions, they’ll look at him in a funny way trying to grasp what he’s saying and (might) reluctantly reply in Italian with a pronounced German accent.

In honor of bilingualism, all roads, locations, villages and peaks bear both German and Italian names. Citizens’ ID cards are different from the rest of Italy’s – they are green and written in both languages. Children go to separate schools according to their mother tongue, and there’s even a third linguistic group: Ladin, a vulgar alpine version of Latin.

The End of Mass Production

Date: 12-01-2014
Source: NewsWeek

Airbnb is leading a DIY Internet revolution that could upend chains everywhere.

Late last year, Airbnb announced that it’s going after the major hotel chains – which at first sounded kind of cute, like a precocious Little League pitcher saying he’s going to strike out Miguel Cabrera.

But when CEO Brian Chesky laid out his thinking for me while sitting on a barrel in Airbnb’s new, funky headquarters in San Francisco, I thought the investors who have pumped $326 million into the company might not be too dim. Airbnb is becoming much more than a way to spend $26 a night to sleep in London with five other people at The Imperial Fleapit.

What’s in Store for Wall Street and the Markets in 2014

Date: 28-12-2013

Source: NewsWeek

 From the boom in American energy exploitation to the tapering of quantitative easing, the economy is heading for a prosperous New Year.

Remember 2013? The Dow banged to a record high, even against a rising Greek chorus of investors warning of the possibility of another flash crash. (To be sure, there was a computer glitch in April that shut down the Chicago Board Options Exchange for half a day, but otherwise the Cassandras were disappointed.)

The shutdown of the federal government for two weeks in October churned markets as part of a long series of self-imposed wounds inflicted by the bifurcated Congress, which fought with itself over the fiscal cliff, the debt ceiling, sequestration, you name it.

Niall Ferguson on How Europe Could Cost Obama the Election

Date: 11-06-2012
Source: NewsWeek

Spain has accepted a big bank bailout, but the Eurostorm isn’t ending anytime soon—and it may come to American shores just in time for the election.

by Niall Ferguson

Could Europe cost Barack Obama the presidency? At first sight, that seems like a crazy question. Isn’t November’s election supposed to be decided in key swing states like Florida and Ohio, not foreign countries like Greece and Spain? And don’t left-leaning Europeans love Obama and loathe Republicans?

Sure. But the possibility is now very real that a double-dip recession in Europe could kill off hopes of a sustained recovery in the United States. As the president showed in his anxious press conference last Friday, he well understands the danger emanating from across the pond. Slower growth and higher unemployment can only hurt his chances in an already very tight race with Mitt Romney.

Most Americans are bored or baffled by Europe. Try explaining the latest news about Greek politics or Spanish banks, and their eyelids begin to droop. So, at the end of a four-week road trip round Europe, let me try putting this in familiar American terms.