The European Central Bank pumped a record €442 billion ($622 billion) into euro-zone money markets Wednesday in its first-ever offer of one-year funds as it battles the Continent’s recession.

Euro-zone banks borrowed the one-year funds, the largest amount the central bank has ever dispersed in a single shot, at the ECB’s current key rate of 1%. Much of the total likely substituted for amounts banks had been borrowing from the ECB for shorter periods, so the net stimulus to the economy is less than it appears at first sight. Read the rest of this entry »

Germany has devised the ultimate in credit crunch vending machines: Gold to Go.

After inserting your euros in the slot there is a familiar whirring noise as if the machine is readying itself to spit out a can of lemonade or a bar of chocolate. Instead there is a satisfying clunk as a prettily wrapped bar of the world’s favourite precious metal thuds into the dispenser.

“It’s better value than the bank,” Romy Erhardt of TG-Gold-Super-Markt told The Times, “And it’s very convenient — no waiting time — you just put in your cash and a minute later you are an investor in gold.” Read the rest of this entry »

European governments have approved $5.3 trillion of aid, more than the annual gross domestic product of Germany, to support banks during the credit crunch, according to a European Union document.

The U.K. pledged 781.2 billion euros ($1.1 trillion) to restore confidence in its lenders, the most of any of the 27 EU members, according to a May 26 document prepared by officials from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and member states and obtained by Bloomberg News. Denmark, where 13 of the country’s 140 banks were bailed out by the central bank or bought by rivals last year, committed 593.9 billion euros.

The measures, designed to save banks and revive economic growth, surpass Germany’s $3.3 trillion economy, the region’s biggest. Read the rest of this entry »

Two passengers with names linked to Islamic terrorism were on the Air France flight which crashed with the loss of 228 lives, it has emerged. French secret servicemen established the connection while working through the list of those who boarded the doomed Airbus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on May 31… Soon after news of the fatal crash broke, agents working for the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure), the French
equivalent of MI6, were dispatched to Brazil.
It was there that they established that two
names on the passenger list are also on highly-classified
documents listing the names of radical Muslims considered
a threat to the French Republic Read the rest of this entry »

The head of China’s second-largest bank has said the United States government should start issuing bonds in yuan, rather than dollars, in the latest indication of the increasing importance of the Chinese currency.

Top Chinese banker Guo Shuqing calls for wider use of yuan
Zhou Xiaochuan, head of the People’s Bank of China, has published a personal paper proposing to replace the dollar as the international reserve currency. Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON - THE US dollar is ’seriously overvalued,’ mostly against the Chinese renminbi and some other Asian currencies, according to a new study published on Wednesday.

The Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington-based think tank, said the majority of the 29 currencies it studied need to appreciate against the dollar, with a large rise especially needed by the Chinese currency.

‘The principal counterpart to the overvalued dollar is the undervaluation of the Chinese renminbi, which would have needed to appreciate about 21 per cent on a weighted average basis and about 40 per cent against the dollar to achieve equilibrium,’ said the study by economists William Cline and John Williamson. Read the rest of this entry »

There has been and continues to be an effort by some of the worlds most elite families to establish a global community, with a global government, some call it the new world order.The plan always benefits them at our expense, and they beleive as long as we show no opposition they can retain control.The massive goal is to bring the global populace into harm-ony, but it is an impossibility unless family loyalty is dissolved and individuality is eradicated. Read the rest of this entry »

Dubai calls on the Rothschild bank for help, perhaps out of desperation. In Saudi Arabia a Saad Group company defaults. US, European and Asian banks are struggling. The end of Ramadan in September might mark the start of an economic depression worse than that of the 1930s.

Milan – Rothschild’s Dubai office has been retained by Dubai’s Department of Finance for advice on the US$ 10 billion financial support fund (FSF) the emirate raised on the bond markets.

Nakheel, the property development arm of Dubai World, was the first to benefit, but is likely to be the last of its kind because funds will be handed out on the basis of two criteria: Read the rest of this entry »

In a surprising find, scientists have discovered a microbe that can efficiently convert direct electrical current into methane.

That may be good news for wind and solar power enthusiasts, who have long been faced with the dilemma of how to store energy when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. This discovery opens the door for generating methane from those renewable power sources; the energy could then be stored as fuel for later use.

But is storing renewable energy in the form of a greenhouse gas like methane a solution, or just another problem? Read the rest of this entry »

Wall Street’s mantra is that markets move randomly and reflect the collective wisdom of investors. The truth is quite opposite. The government’s visible hand and insiders control markets and manipulate them up or down for profit - all of them, including stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies. Read the rest of this entry »