UPDATE 13MAY2013: DHS Wants Equipment For “Riot Control Situations”

(Paul Joseph Watson) -

The Department of Homeland Security is purchasing hundreds of items of protective gear for its fleet of Federal Protective Service officers in order to prepare for “riot control situations,” increasing concerns that the federal agency is readying for domestic unrest.

A June 10 solicitation posted on the FedBizOpps website seeks to outfit officers working for the DHS’ Federal Protective Service, which is primarily used to guard government buildings but has also been used to spy on protesters.

As we reported last month, FPS officers were used to guard an IRS building in St. Louis during a Tea Party protest against the federal agency’s discrimination targeting conservative groups.

As GSN reports, the items the DHS is looking to acquire include the following;

- 111 Centurion CPX2500 Soft Shell Riot Control System upper body and shoulder protection, which must “effectively protect the torso and shoulders from blunt force trauma.”

- 123 Centurion TPX200 thigh/groin protection systems “designed for blunt trauma protection during riot control situations,” said the solicitation. The gear “protects the thigh area and has an adjustable and removable groin protector.”

- 110 Hatch TS70 Centurion hard shell shin guards, which must provide “substantial protection from flying debris. Non-ballistic weapons, and blows to the leg.”

- 189 MaxPro-Police riot helmets, which have a “high impact molded half shell helmet with integral visor and neck protector.”

The solicitation also includes a request for 116 pairs of tactical gloves and 128 forearm protectors. The contract includes four additional one year option periods. The equipment will be delivered to a Federal Protective Service facility in Alexandria, VA, within 45 days of the award.

The reference to “riot control situations” can be found in the “Statement of Work” file at the bottom of the solicitation.

Fears that the Department of Homeland Security is preparing for civil unrest have intensified ever since the agency began purchasing large quantities of ammunition. Having already committed to purchasing well over 1.6 billion rounds of bullets over the course of the last year, a DHS “request for information” issued last month quizzed bullet manufacturers on how fast they can supply large quantities of ammo.

The request asked ammo companies if they were capable of supplying, “large quantity orders of any training caliber specified with a short turnaround time of 30-60 days.”

Last year, the DHS hired hundreds of new FPS guards to protect government buildings across the country.

This followed a controversial drill in Florida dubbed “Operation Shield,” during which FPS agents armed with semiautomatic guns were posted outside a Social Security office in Florida. The unannounced exercise centered around “detecting the presence of unauthorized persons and potentially disruptive or dangerous activities.” Residents were forced to show identification papers to the guards during the drill.

Whether the DHS is preparing for riots targeting government buildings remains to be seen, but this will do little to dampen concerns that big government is arming itself to the teeth while Americans are being lectured about relinquishing their second amendment rights.

Read Original: http://www.infowars.com/dhs-wants-equipment-for-riot-control-situations/

Government Spying on Americans … and then Giving Info to Giant Corporations

Big Banks and Other Corporate Bigwigs Benefit from Illegal Spying

You’ve heard that the government spies on all Americans.
But you might not know that the government shares some of that information with big corporations.
Reuters reported in 2011 that the NSA shares intelligence with Wall Street banks in the name of “battling hackers.”

The National Security Agency, a secretive arm of the U.S. military, has begun providing Wall Street banks with intelligence on foreign hackers, a sign of growing U.S. fears of financial sabotage.The assistance from the agency that conducts electronic spying overseas is part of an effort by American banks and other financial firms to get help from the U.S. military and private defense contractors to fend off cyber attacks, according to interviews with U.S. officials, security experts and defense industry executives.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has also warned banks of particular threats amid concerns that hackers could potentially exploit security vulnerabilities to wreak havoc across global markets and cause economic mayhem.
***
NSA Director Keith Alexander, who runs the U.S. military’s cyber operations, told Reuters the agency is currently talking to financial firms about sharing electronic information on malicious software, possibly by expanding a pilot program through which it offers similar data to the defense industry.
***
NSA, which has long been charged with protecting classified government networks from attack, is already working with Nasdaq to beef up its defenses after hackers infiltrated its computer systems last year and installed malicious software that allowed them to spy on the directors of publicly held companies.
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The NSA’s work with Wall Street marks a milestone in the agency’s efforts to make its cyber intelligence available more broadly to the private sector.
***
Greater cooperation with industry became possible after a deal reached a year ago between the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, allowing NSA to provide cyber expertise to other government agencies and certain private companies.

In March, PC Magazine noted:

“Right now, the ability to share real-time information is complicated and there are legal barriers. We have to overcome that,” Gen Keith B. Alexander, director of the National Security Agency and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, said during a Thursday appearance at Georgia Tech’s Cyber Security Symposium.
[Alexander has been pushing for the  anti-privacy Internet bill known as "CISPA" to be passed.] “It allows the government to start working with industry and … discuss with each of these sector about the best approach,” he said.

CISPA would allow the NSA to more openly share data with corporations in the name of protecting against “cyber threats.” But that phrase is too squisy.  As the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes:

A “cybersecurity purpose” only means that a company has to think that a user is trying to harm its network. What does that mean, exactly? The definition is broad and vague. The definition allows purposes such as guarding against “improper” information modification, ensuring “timely” access to information or “preserving authorized restrictions on access…protecting…proprietary information” (i.e. DRM).

More importantly,  as the ACLU notes, “Fusion Centers” – a hybrid of military, intelligence agency, police and private corporations set up in centers throughout the country, and run by the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security – allow big businesses like Boeing to get access to classified information which gives them an unfair advantage over smaller competitors:

Participation in fusion centers might give Boeing access to the trade secrets or security vulnerabilities of competing companies, or might give it an advantage in competing for government contracts. Expecting a Boeing analyst to distinguish between information that represents a security risk to Boeing and information that represents a business risk may be too much to ask.

A 2008 Department of Homeland Security Privacy Office review of fusion centers concluded that they presented risks to privacy because of ambiguous lines of authority, rules and oversight, the participation of the military and private sector, data mining, excessive secrecy, inaccurate or incomplete information and the dangers of mission creep.
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found in 2012 that fusion centers spy on citizens, produce ‘shoddy’ work unrelated to terrorism or real threats:

“The Subcommittee investigation found that DHS-assigned detailees to the fusion centers forwarded ‘intelligence’ of uneven quality – oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.”

Under the FBI’s Infraguard program, businesses sometimes receive intel even before elected officials.
Law enforcement agencies spy on protesters and then share the info – at taxpayer expense – with the giant Wall Street banks
And a security expert says that all Occupy Wall Street protesters had their cellphone information logged by the government.
Alternet notes:

Ironically, records indicate that corporate entities engaged in such public-private intelligence sharing partnerships were often the very same corporate entities criticized, and protested against, by the Occupy Wall Street movement as having undue influence in the functions of public government.

In essence, big banks and giant corporations are seen as being part of “critical infrastructure” and “key resources” … so the government protects them.  That creates a dynamic where the government will do quite a bit to protect the big boys against any real or imagined threats … whether from activists or even smaller competitors. (Remember that the government has completely propped up the big banks, even though they went bankrupt due to stupid gambles.)
The Investigative Fund at the Nation reports:

The $103,000 no-bid contract awarded by the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security to the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR) in 2009 is a drop in the bucket. ITRR, a private security firm headed by a former PA chief of police, was given the task of providing the department with thrice-weekly intelligence bulletins that identified threats to the state’s critical infrastructure. Instead of focusing on real threats, however, ITRR turned its attention to law-abiding activist groups including Tea Party protesters, pro-life activists, and anti-fracking environmental organizations. The bulletins included information about when and where local environmental groups would be meeting, upcoming protests, and anti-fracking activists’ internal strategy. As I recently wrote in my Investigative Fund/Earth Island Journal story, the bulletins were then distributed to local police chiefs, state, federal, and private intelligence agencies, and the security directors of the natural gas companies, as well as industry groups and PR firms. The state’s Department of Homeland Security was essentially providing intelligence to the natural gas industry about their detractors. And Pennsylvania taxpayers were footing the bill.
Perhaps because it was a relatively small contract the Pennsylvania spy scandal was brushed aside as an unfortunate mistake. Then-Governor Ed Rendell, whose own ties to the natural gas industry have recently been exposed, called the episode “deeply embarrassing.” The state terminated its contract with ITRR, a one-day Senate hearing was held, and the matter largely forgotten. But the Pennsylvania story is not an isolated case. In fact, it represents a larger pattern of corporate and police spying on activists and everyday citizens exercising their First Amendment rights.
A report published by the Center for Media and Democracy last month detailed how Homeland Security fusion centers, corporations, and local law enforcement agencies have teamed up to spy on Occupy Wall Street protesters. Fusion centers, created between 2003 and 2007 by the Department of Homeland Security, are centers for the sharing of federal-level information between the CIA, FBI, US military, local governments, and more. The more than 70 fusion centers, whose primary task is to analyze and share information with public and private actors, are part of Homeland Security’s growing “Information Sharing Environment” (ISE). According to their website, ISE “provides analysts, operators, and investigators with integrated and synthesized terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and homeland security information needed to enhance national security and help keep our people safe.” The other big domestic public-private intelligence sharing ventures are Infragard, managed by the FBI’s Cyber Division Public/Private Alliance Unit, and the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC), which openly states that its mission includes “advancing the ability of the U.S. private sector to protect its employees, assets and proprietary information.”
The little known DSAC brings together representatives from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, and some of the nation’s most powerful corporations. Twenty-nine corporations and banks are on the DSAC Leadership Board, including Bank of America, ConocoPhillips, and Wal-Mart. The Department of Homeland Security also has a Private Sector Information-Sharing Working Group, which includes representatives from more than 50 Fortune 500 companies. They have pushed for increased funding of public-private intelligence sharing partnerships, largely through the expansion of fusion centers. According to the Department of Homeland Security website, “Our nation faces an evolving threat environment, in which threats not only emanate from outside our borders, but also from within our communities. This new environment demonstrates the increasingly critical role fusion centers play to support the sharing of threat related information between the federal government and federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial partners.”
***
As Mike German, an FBI special agent for 16 years who now works for the ACLU told me, “These systems and this type of collection is so rife with inappropriate speculation and error — both intentional and unintentional — that your good behavior doesn’t protect you.”
[T]he fossil fuel industry is seeking to protect itself from an increasingly restless environmental movement. One way of doing so is to paint the opposition as extremists or potential terrorists. “It’s the new politics of the petro-state,” Jeff Monaghan, a researcher with the Surveillance Studies Center at Queen’s University in Ontario, said. “It’s like this is not only environmental activism it’s activism against our way of life. It’s activism against the economy and the system. Because the system is now a petro system.”
Indeed, because of its enormous shale gas reserves, the United States is already being talked of as a future petro-state, and shale gas development a matter of national security. In his keynote address at the 2011 Shale Gas Insight Conference sponsored by the Marcellus Shale Coalition, Tom Ridge, former head of the Department of Homeland Security, described shale gas as vital to US national security. Everything that goes along with it — the rigs, pipelines, and compressor stations (not to mention air and water pollution) — will be viewed as part of the nation’s critical infrastructure. According to the Center for Media and Democracy report, “The stated purpose of protecting ‘critical infrastructure/key resources’ has come to serve as the single largest avenue for corporate involvement in the ‘homeland security’ apparatus.”

And given that some 70% of the national intelligence budget is spent on private sector contractors. that millions of private contractors have clearance to view information gathered by spy agencies – including kids like 29 year old spying whistleblower Edward Snowden, who explained that he had the power to spy on anyone in the country – and that information gained by the NSA by spying on Americans is being shared with agencies in other countries, at least some of the confidential information is undoubtedly leaking into private hands for profit, without the government’s knowledge or consent.
As the ACLU noted in 2004:

There is a long and unfortunate history of cooperation between government security agencies and powerful corporations to deprive individuals of their privacy and other civil liberties, and any program that institutionalizes close, secretive ties between such organizations raises serious questions about the scope of its activities, now and in the future.

Indeed, the government has been affirmatively helping the big banks, giant oil companies and other large corporations cover up fraud and to go after critics.  For example, Business Week reported on May 23, 2006:

President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations.

Reuters noted in 2010:

U.S. securities regulators originally treated the New York Federal Reserve’s bid to keep secret many of the details of the American International Group bailout like a request to protect matters of national security, according to emails obtained by Reuters.

Wired reported the same year:

The DHS issued a directive to employees in July 2009 requiring a wide range of public records requests to pass through political appointees for vetting. These included any requests dealing with a “controversial or sensitive subject” or pertaining to meetings involving prominent business leaders and elected officials. Requests from lawmakers, journalists, and activist and watchdog groups were also placed under this scrutiny.

In an effort to protect Bank of America from the threatened Wikileaks expose of wrongdoing – the Department of Justice told Bank of America to a hire a specific hardball-playing law firm to assemble a team to take down WikiLeaks (and see this)
The government and big banks actually coordinated on the violent crackdown of the anti-big bank Occupy protest.
The government is also using anti-terrorism laws to keep people from learning what pollutants are in their own community, in order to protect the fracking, coal and other polluting industries. See this, this, this, this and this.
Investigating factory farming can get one labeled a terrorist.
Infringing the copyright of a big corporation may also get labeled as a terrorist … and a swat team may be deployed to your house.  See this, this, this and this.  As the executive director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School notes:

This administration … publishes a newsletter about its efforts with language that compares copyright infringement to terrorism.

In short, the “national security” apparatus has been hijacked to serve the needs of big business.

Did the ECB Mega Bailout Just Hit the Wall?

by Phoenix Capital Research

Few analysts know or admit it, but the only thing that held Europe (and ultimately the financial system) together since May 2012 was the promise of unlimited bond purchases from the ECB.

The reason this worked was because traders poured into European bonds in an effort to front run the coming ECB purchases (much as they have done with Treasuries during every new QE plan in the US).

This in turn became a self-fulfilling prophecy as European bond yields fell which induced more buying… which resulted in politicians proclaiming that the EU Crisis was “over.”

However, none of the structural issues in Europe were solved in any way. And now we’re getting to the details of the ECB’s proposed plan. And they are… nothing. The ECB is asking Germany’s constitutional court to “OK” a plan to buy whatever the ECB wants…without providing any legal details around the deal.

Why is this? How can you ask for unlimited funds without providing any details? Even a mortgage requires contracts. Surely an unlimited bond-buying program would require mountains of documents?

The fact of the matter is that the ECB knows there is no such thing as “unlimited” buying. At some point the bond markets will reject intervention (much as they are in Japan today).

Instead, the ECB used the term “unlimited” because it wanted investors to “imagine” that everything was solved.But Europe doesn’t have much money.

Indeed, Germany initially was going to set the program’s limit at a little over €500 billion… that sounds like a lot, but when you consider that the EU sovereign bond market is over €11 TRILLION and growing monthly, this will only go so far.

Put another way, the entire “unlimited” promise by the ECB was a bluff. The markets are beginning to figure this out which is why Europe is heading back into Crisis.

Take a look at Spanish bank Santander: we have a series of lower highs since the peak in January 2013. Whenever we take out the trendline it’s game over.



Check out the Head and Shoulders forming in Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo:



For market insights on how to prepare for the coming mess, visit us at: http://gainspainscapital.com/protect-your-portfolio/

Best Regards
Graham Summers

IBM lays off more than 700 in Westchester, Dutchess

http://www.lohud.com/videonetwork/2475786895001/IBM-layoffs-will-impact-hundreds
Armonk-based IBM slashed jobs across the country Wednesday, including more than 700 in Westchester and Dutchess counties.
While the total number of jobs cut in Westchester was not immediately known, a staffer in the Somers office who got a layoff notice said she saw 83 eliminations in the marketing and communications department — mostly in Somers and Armonk.
Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro said the company cut 697 jobs there — 328 in Poughkeepsie and 369 in East Fishkill.
Molinaro said the news “is further indication that the national and state economy remains uncertain. What is certain is that too many families will have been given devastating news today.”
It appears to be the largest downsizing at IBM in Dutchess County in years.
The labor organization Alliance@IBM was compiling individual reports of layoffs in New York as well as Vermont, Massachusetts and North Carolina, including two posts from workers saying they worked in Somers.
A number of workers told The Poughkeepsie Journal that they or people they know had been dismissed.
Tom Midgley, president of Alliance@IBM, who works for IBM in Dutchess County, said Wednesday afternoon that details of the downsizing were still coming in, but he was sure of two things: “It’s big, and it’s agonizing for employees to go through this.”
IBM spokesman Douglas Shelton issued a statement that neither confirmed nor denied the downsizing, but spoke of a “workforce remix.”
Companies with more than 50 employees must warn New York state 90 days in advance if they are laying off 33 percent of their workforce or 250 workers from a single site. There was no such letter from IBM on file in the state’s online database.
State Labor Commissioner Peter M. Rivera said in a statement that he directed a rapid-response re-employment team to help all of the workers find new jobs as quickly as possible.
“These specialized teams will work with each worker to help connect them with job openings in the Hudson Valley region and many more throughout the state,” he said.

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Staff writers Ernie Garcia and Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, The Associated Press and the Poughkeepsie Journal contributed to this report.

Closing Atlantic City bridge underscores declining infrastructure

By DEREK HARPER, Staff Writer
Venice Park resident Alma Johnson has tried to take in stride the surprise closing of an Atlantic City neighborhood bridge she uses every day.
The Ohio Avenue span over the Penrose Canal was closed June 6 due to safety concerns, raising questions about the safety of other bridges in the region.

“I never knew the bridge wasn’t in good repair,” Johnson said.
Johnson, 70, is president of the Venice Park Civic Association and said she usually travels across the bridge at least three times per day. She said it is inconvenient to detour on to the White Horse Pike every time she leaves her neighborhood.
“Over there it’s a little messy because all of that Borgata traffic is coming in, and they’re driving crazy,” she said.
The bridge will likely remain closed for repairs for several months, staff in the city engineer’s office said Wednesday, forcing about 1,300 drivers every day to find an alternate route.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration listed the 1969 span as one of New Jersey’s nearly 700 “structurally deficient” bridges.  That means slightly more than 10 percent of the state’s total bridges may have one or more significant problems in need of repair.
In addition, a quarter of the state’s 6,486 bridges are considered “functionally obsolete,” meaning the design and layout is not up to current standards. Nationally, about 11 percent of the country’s 607,000 bridges are considered structurally deficient, while 14 percent are considered functionally obsolete.
The American Society of Civil Engineers gave New Jersey’s bridges a D grade in the report last year, saying structures needed a cumulative $7.7 billion over the next 10  years to slow the number of bridges deemed structurally deficient.
Richard F. Keevey, the report’s author, wrote that he expected constraints on federal spending, requiring New Jersey and other states to lean on local governments to pay the bill.
The National Bridge Inventory notes the bridges’ attributes and evaluates the condition of a critical part of the nation’s infrastructure. The sufficiency of every bridge is ranked on a 100-point scale.
While bridges across New Jersey are 53 years old on average, they have a median sufficiency rating of 83, with some notable exceptions.
The database gave ratings of just 8 and 10 to the two bridges that made up the Beeselys Point Bridge crossing over Great Egg Harbor. Major structural problems closed the former private toll road in 2004, and it is scheduled to be demolished by the end of the year.
There are eight other bridges rated less than 20 in the region. The lowest rated is Upper Township’s Corsons Inlet Bridge, which has a structural sufficiency rating of 11. Evaluators rated both the superstructure and substructure as poor, while the deck was considered fair.
On an average day, 2,495 people use the 1948 bridge. Evaluators have raised concerns about scouring, the erosion around the structure, noting “bridge foundations determined to be unstable for assessed or calculated scour conditions.”
However, evaluators did not find evidence of extensive scouring and wrote the overall condition met the tolerable limits to be left in place.
The Cape May County Bridge Commission owns the bridge, and Linda Gilles, its interim executive director, said she was unaware of the potential for scouring damage. She said the commission is in the early stages of authorizing substructure repairs to it and two other bridges, but it was too early to know the schedule.
The Cape May County Bridge Commission spent $3.4 million between 2006 and 2008 enabling it to lift weight restrictions. The bridge made news in February 2011, when two teens in an SUV tore though rusted bridge railings and plunged into the inlet water, escaping without injury. The railings were replaced last year.
Other low-rated bridges include a pair of crossings on Somers Point-Mays Landing Road in Egg Harbor Township. Those bridges, over the Patcong and English creeks, were rated 16 and 17, respectively.
Another bridge on that road, across Lakes Creek, was rated at 57. However, it too was considered structurally deficient.
The English Creek bridge has been closed since Tropical Storm Irene in August 2011 and is scheduled to be replaced by Atlantic County this summer.
The database shows the least sufficient major bridges in this region are the series of spans that link the Manahawkin section of Stafford Township with Long Beach Island.
Even before Hurricane Sandy, federal evaluators determined these four bridges, built in the late 1950s, had sufficiency ratings between 32 and 48. This is important, as they carry between 11,000 and 47,000 vehicles per day, depending on the season.
The bridges are scheduled to be replaced over the next several years as part of the $350 million Route 72 Manahawkin Bay Bridges project, according to the state Department of Transportation. The project will repair and update the bridges as well as add new lanes for pedestrians and bicyclists.
In Atlantic City, meanwhile, people are still regarding the Ohio Avenue bridge with suspicion.
Its most recent evaluation determined the roadway surface on the 80-foot bridge was in good condition and the superstructure was rated satisfactory, but the substructure was considered to be in poor condition.
Federal evaluators last year determined the bridge’s sufficiency rating was 40 of 100, and its overall condition was tolerable within federal guidelines to be left in place.
However, older evaluations show the bridge had declined in recent years. A 2010 survey noted the substructure was in fair condition and gave the span a sufficiency rating of 55. The substructure was satisfactory in 2000, with a 65 rating, while in 1992, all aspects of the bridge were rated good, and it had an 88 rating.
On Wednesday night city Engineer William England told City Council the repairs necessary for reopening the Venice Park bridge likely will be done in phases. He said he has been in contact with the state Department of Transportation, including as late as 4:30 p.m. Wednesday.
“As of this moment, I'm in process of filling out applications for the work and for emergency funding,” he said. “I should have a little more information next week as far as scheduling.”
Anthony Cox, a Venice Park resident, said he trusts the region’s public officials to detect structural problems before they became critical. “It’s a bit of an inconvenience,” the 48-year-old said of the detour, but “it’s a necessary inconvenience.”
But for Johnson, the closed bridge was indicative of wider problems in the resort.
“They keep saying ‘Do AC,’” Johnson said. “My motto is ‘Fix AC, then Do AC.’ That’s how I feel.”
Contact Derek Harper:

France air traffic control strike spreads across EU

A passenger checks a board which shows departing flights at Roissy Charles de Gaulle international airport on June 11, 2013.

Nearly three-quarters of flights from France’s busiest airports were cancelled due to the ongoing strike, which came in protest at a European Commission (EC) proposal to create a single airspace for the continent."

A strike staged by French air traffic controllers is expanding across Europe with ten more countries bracing for similar industrial action.

Nearly three-quarters of flights from France’s busiest airports were cancelled due to the ongoing strike, which came in protest at a European Commission (EC) proposal to create a single airspace for the continent.

The French Directorate General for Civil Aviation (DGAC) said in a statement that about 1,800 flights were cancelled on Wednesday.

“Nearly 100 percent” of France's air traffic controllers were taking part in the strike, DGAC added.

The three-day strike, which was called by the European Transport Workers' Federation (ETF), started on Tuesday.

The DGAC asked airlines serving airports in Paris, Lyon, Nice, Marseille, Toulouse, and Bordeaux to reduce flights by 50 percent starting early Tuesday, through late Thursday.

The EC is proposing to centralize the air traffic control, instead of having each European member state monitor its own airspace. The European body says that the change could cut costs, reduce delays, and triple the region’s airspace.

However, air controllers are saying that the plan will affect safety and working conditions, adding that the proposed changes are also in violation of national sovereignty of European nations.

According to the ETF, the strikes seek to “stop a never-ending process of liberalization, deregulation and cost-cutting in the Air Traffic Management industry.”

Meanwhile on Tuesday, the European Union’s Transportation Commissioner Siim Kallas told the European Parliament, “The time has come for more decisive action. If we leave things as they are, we will be confronted with heavy congestion and chaos in our airspace.”

Meanwhile, workers in a number of countries including Austria, Britain, Italy and Portugal staged walkouts, gatherings and minimum-work actions.

MR/KA/SS

Australian economy has burst, worst yet to come

Curve Watchers Anonymous has its eye on the Australian dollar. As expected, it has taken a big dive in conjunction with a housing bust and a slowdown in China that impacts the demand for commodities.

The only thing surprising to me about this plunge is how long it took, but here we are.

Aussie Falls to Lowest in More Than Two Years

Bloomberg reports Aussie Falls to Lowest in More Than Two Years as Home Loans Slow

Australia’s dollar fell to the lowest in more than two years versus the greenback after home-loan approvals grew at the slowest pace in three months, boosting the case for further cuts to borrowing costs.
The Aussie slid against all but one of its 16 most-traded peers amid speculation the U.S. central bank will reduce stimulus this year, narrowing Australia’s interest-rate advantage. Standard & Poor’s lifted the U.S. credit outlook to stable from negative, supporting the view that the Federal Reserve could taper asset purchases under its program of quantitative easing. New Zealand’s kiwi dollar fell.
“Housing is the one area most likely to make up for the mining investment downturn, and it’s disappointed,” said Joseph Capurso, a Sydney-based foreign-exchange strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

Australian Insolvencies Hit Record 

Why anyone would think housing would make up for a downturn in mining is certainly a mystery given Australian insolvencies hit record for month of April.

 A new April record has been set for Australian companies becoming insolvent. Some 941 firms were put under administration, marking the highest tally for that month since records were first made public in 1999.
Some 941 firms were put under administration, according to an FTI Consulting analysis of Australian Securities and Investments Commission records.
Almost 3450 companies have gone into administration so far this year, compared with 3524 during the same period in 2012.
But the number is higher than the opening four months of 2008 to 2011, which included the global financial crisis.

Worst Yet to Come

For Australia, the worst is yet to come. Australia escaped a big economic bust in 2008 because of high demand for housing and commodity demand from China, but both sectors are in the tank now, and will stay there.
China is slowing and will continue to slow, Australia labor costs are ridiculous, the Australian housing bubble has burst, and commercial real estate has only one way to go: down.
SEE ALSO:
- Australia’s Carbon Tax contributing to record business failures
- Reserve Bank of Australia quietly increases banks’ bailout buffer
- Australian government set to seize money from citizens bank accounts
- Australian politician exposes the New World Order

Source: http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/06/australian-dollar-plunges-as-home-loans.html