Daily Digest
Daily Digest 3/6 - Banks Pose Greek Debt Plan, Why It's Curtains For The Euro, The Big Fracking Bubble
by Daily Digest
Tuesday, March 6, 2012, 11:44 AM
- Banks and insurers pose Greek debt plan
- In China, Sobering Signs of Slower Growth
- No Letup Seen As Pennsylvania School Pension Costs Soar
- Illinois State ‘On Brink Of Collapse’
- Marc Faber Assures Us That Gold Is Nowhere Near A Bubble Phase
- Goldman Secret Greece Loan Shows Two Sinners as Client Unravels
- Why It's Curtains For The Euro
- Europe Maps Africa's Renewable Energy Potential
- The Big Fracking Bubble: The Scam Behind the Gas Boom
Learn how to protect your wealth against the Three E forces using our 'What Should I Do?' guide
Economy
Banks and insurers pose Greek debt plan (Saxplayer00o1)
Here are the different scenarios:
Investors holding less than 66 percent of the debt sign up: Greece withdraws the offer, loses the second bailout and defaults on all of its debt. In that case, not only the private investors but the eurozone countries, the IMF, the European Central Bank and national central banks in the currency union face massive losses.
Investors holding between 66 percent and 74 percent of the debt sign up: Greece uses new legislation to force losses on holdouts. That would likely trigger payouts on so-called credit default swaps - complex financial products that act as bond insurance - which the eurozone fears could cause panic on financial market.
Investors holding between 75 percent and 90 percent of the debt sign up: Athens and eurozone finance ministers may force holdouts to accept the deal.
In China, Sobering Signs of Slower Growth (jdargis)
Premier Wen said in his annual report to the National People’s Congress on Monday morning in Beijing that the government had scaled its economic growth target back to 7.5 percent this year, down from the 8 percent that Beijing has set as a minimum growth target in recent years. If growth does come in at only
No Letup Seen As Pennsylvania School Pension Costs Soar (Saxplayer00o1)
This school year, the state made a $600 million pension contribution, about $316 million less than for 2012-13. That's about 6.7 percent of the total state K-12 public school budget. In 2012-13, the state PSERS payment will be more than 10 percent of the proposed K-12 total.
The increases will continue; the combined state and local contribution is projected to be almost $2.5 billion in 2013-14. By 2019-20, it would more than quadruple, compared with this school year, to almost $5 billion.
In recent state Senate testimony, Jay Himes, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials, said a "financial tsunami" was on the way, with "the makings of a financial crisis in every school district across the state."
Illinois State ‘On Brink Of Collapse’ (Saxplayer00o1)
To save a system he says is “on the brink of collapse”, Mr Quinn proposes cutting $2.7bn from Illinois’ $11.5bn Medicaid bill. Few would dispute that the state needs to change its behaviour. Last year, Illinois underfunded Medicaid by $2bn as it struggled with debts totalling more than $280bn, an $86bn hole in its public pension funds and a $9bn backlog of unpaid bills.
Marc Faber Assures Us That Gold Is Nowhere Near A Bubble Phase (David B.)
After Standard & Poor’s (S&P) downgraded a cluster of Eurozone countries in January, you came out saying that downgrades should have been even deeper, depending on the country’s credit-worthiness. S&P did give below-investment-grade ratings to Portugal and Cyprus—BB and BB+, respectively—but you indicated that some of these countries warrant CCC ratings. Do you anticipate additional downgrades?
Goldman Secret Greece Loan Shows Two Sinners as Client Unravels (pinecarr)
On the day the 2001 deal was struck, the government owed the bank about 600 million euros ($793 million) more than the 2.8 billion euros it borrowed, said Spyros Papanicolaou, who took over the country’s debt-management agency in 2005. By then, the price of the transaction, a derivative that disguised the loan and that Goldman Sachs persuaded Greece not to test with competitors, had almost doubled to 5.1 billion euros, he said.
Papanicolaou and his predecessor, Christoforos Sardelis, revealing details for the first time of a contract that helped Greece mask its growing sovereign debt to meet European Union requirements, said the country didn’t understand what it was buying and was ill-equipped to judge the risks or costs.
Why It's Curtains For The Euro (David B.)
If you believe the messages from Europe … if you believe the constant bailout propaganda … if you believe it when the media tells you the problems in Europe have been solved … then you are likely in position to get side-swiped, again, by another global financial storm.
Energy
Europe Maps Africa's Renewable Energy Potential (James S.)
First, the report notes the disparity between EU and African energy consumption rates, blandly observing, “The available data which were used for this report indicate a wide range both of per capita energy consumption (100 to 2,000 kgoe [kilograms of oil equivalent]/capacity/year) and per capita electricity consumption (50 to 4000 kilowatt hour/capacity/year). Relative to the average of the European Union, this corresponds to up to 35 times less regarding all energy, and up to 100 times less regarding electricity. Even though electrification made considerable progress in the past 10 years, 600 million of Africa’s rural population has no access to electricity at all.”
The Big Fracking Bubble: The Scam Behind the Gas Boom (Davos)
It’s not only toxic – it’s driven by a right-wing billionaire who profits more from flipping land than drilling for gas.
"We're the biggest frackers in the world," he declares proudly over a $400 bottle of French Bordeaux at a restaurant he co-owns in his hometown of Oklahoma City. "We frack all the time. What's the big deal?"
Article suggestions for the Daily Digest can be sent to dd@PeakProsperity.com. All suggestions are filtered by the Daily Digest team and preference is given to those that are in alignment with the message of the Crash Course and the "3 Es."
) Some of the loops are only available for one or two past 12 hour loop histories and may be gone. I guess that's part of the conspiracy......
Join the discussion