money money money

When written in Chinese the word “crisis” is composed of two characters. One represents “danger”, and the other represents “opportunity”. This is the most accurate way I can express my thoughts and feelings about the coming year in the commodities markets. Volatile, unpredictable yet scattered with times of great opportunity. The prophecy of the world ending in 2012 seems ever more relevant when we look at a world flirting with potential disaster.

Growing numbers of Europeans are fleeing the euro crisis for a new life in Australia.

The worst of the euro zone crisis is over as leaders in the European Union have taken a lot of steps to fix the underlying issues, Otmar Issing, a German economist and former European Central Bank chief economist, told CNBC late on Tuesday.

Mention the word "agency" right now in the government offices of Europe and you'll get a frosty response. Ratings agency S&P's downgrade of almost everybody and everything (and they're not done yet with banks and insurance funds) annoyed those trying to sort out Europe's crisis.

For Hans-Werner Sinn, president of the Munich-based Ifo Institute for Economic Research, the risk of a Greek bankruptcy is the lesser evil compared with a further spreading of the debt crisis within the eurozone. He thinks Greece should leave the euro.

See the UK national debt grow in real time and find out why it's rocketed over £900 billion. Uncover who we owe, how much, and what it means for your future.

“What is so important for central bankers is to be able to think globally, in a macro framework, and to understand the interconnections between markets in a global and open economy,” he said in an interview. “This is the kind of education you get when you work a bit more than having a bachelor degree or MA in economics. You need to work more than that.”

The World Bank warned nations on Wednesday to brace for chaos as a new global financial crisis worse than 2008 looms ahead. To indicate how bad the situation would be, the bank cut by half its previous 2012 growth forecast for high-income countries.

The World Bank has slashed its global growth forecast and told developing
nations to prepare for the worst, warning that Europe’s debt crisis could
trigger an even deeper slump than the post-Lehman collapse three years ago.

Geir Haarde, Iceland's ousted leader, awaits trial over role in financial crisisWashington PostThe first world leader to face criminal charges related to the financial crisis, he has seen his face plastered in print across the globe, not in flattering...

The World Bank says the global economy is teetering on the edge of a new financial crisis that could be deeper and longer lasting than the chaos that surrounded the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

As Euro area debt problems and weakening growth in several big emerging economies are dimming global growth prospects, the World Bank, WB, in its latest Global Economic Prospects (GEP) 2012 has projected that developing countries should prepare for further downside risks.

While Washington is gripped in an agonizing and potentially lethal game of chicken over the U.S. debt ceiling, the risk of sovereign defaults still remains much higher across the pond, in Europe.

The ultimate grain of truth in the fiscal union is that a monetary union necessarily requires the coordination of fiscal policies to prevent adverse and asymmetric policy outcomes within the union. The fateful conclusion from recent EU debt crisis is that without the integration of the labor market on the EU level, the monetary integration cannot exist in coherence with asymmetric fiscal policies. In the future, stricter adherence to budgetary discipline will be necessary through budgetary authority. In this respect, countries that fail to adhere to Maastricht criteria and deviate from the fiscal discipline either marginally or substantially should be condemned and pay for their actions of fiscal imprudence by withdrawing from the monetary union.

In this 21st Century, young Americans are taught a sanitized version of American history that doesn't even make any sense. As with so many things, if you want to know what really happened, just follow the money.

This time Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, look at the scandals behind: ‘the owner of Great Britain’ bouncing a million check for a pile of dirt in the Persian Gulf; a currency speculator in Monaco moving currency markets with an ‘accidental Jim Rogers press release’ while Colonel Gaddafi calls for jihad against Switzerland and receives zero market impact; and Alan Greenspan wins major award for causing up global financial markets to explode. Keiser also talks to David DeGraw about his new book, “The Economic Elite versus the People of the United States of America.”