EU eyes bloc-wide bank watchdog
EU leaders on Friday agreed to bring
banks under bloc-wide supervision next year, but failed to pin down an exact
date dashing hopes of a quick move towards a full banking union.Although
loose, the 2013 timetable settled during 11 hours of talks at a Brussels summit
should eventually pave the way for ailing banks to receive cash directly from
Europe's bailout funds.The decision took place in a calmer market environment
Thursday, but also against a backdrop of fresh violence in Greece, the origin
of the three-year crisis, where a man died during a general strike and
anti-austerity protests.The 27 European Union leaders set themselves "the
objective of agreeing on the legislative framework by 1 January 2013,"
said a statement. Work on actually setting up the body would take place
"in the course of 2013", it added.German Chancellor Angela Merkel
called the timetable "very ambitious," even as French President
Francois Hollande pushed for quick implementation. She said the EU needed
"quality before speed" and a watchdog "worthy of the
name."The European Commission's Jose Manuel Barroso said European Central
Bank (ECB) head Mario Draghi had told leaders a "reasonable" estimate
for implementation would be "less than one year but certainly more than
one or two months.""I can't give you a precise date," EU
President Herman Van Rompuy conceded when pushed during an early-hours press
conference. Finance ministers, next scheduled to meet on November 12, would
take up the issue, he said.Expectations that the new body could begin work from
the start of the new year slipped amid discord between Europe's two
powerhouses, one European official saying that even in the "fastest
scenario", it would be "summer 2013."A French government source
said the ECB would only supervise all 6 000 eurozone banks "from the
beginning of 2014."The basic idea remains that in future, struggling banks
in debt-wracked countries that pose a danger to Europe's financial system could
be recapitalised directly from EU bailout funds.But a Spanish governmental
source said Madrid had "assumed" for the last month - since the
German, Dutch and Finnish governments had rowed back on aspects of a
provisional agreement dating from June - "that there wasn't going to be a
direct recapitalisation."The Spanish official said the result of
independent stress tests was that the recapitalisation would amount to 4.0% of
Spain's gross domestic product, "which we can handle." Hollande said
expectations on markets of a sovereign bailout request by Spain had not come
up, although he warned that "adding austerity to austerity" by
imposing harsh conditions on Madrid would be counter productive.
Germany has been pushing Madrid back for weeks, and Hollande suggested that
next year's German general election lay behind proposals from Berlin to beef up
the power of the European Commission to supervise individual countries'
budgets.Eurozone leaders also hailed "good progress" in Greece to
carry out reforms aimed at getting its economy back on track, after the
so-called 'troika' of international lenders said it hoped for a deal
"within days" on resuming much-needed financial aid.Greece's
conservative-led government is in talks with the troika on an austerity package
needed to unlock a loan payment of €31.5bn, which has been pending since
June.Greek riot police fired tear gas at protesters on the sidelines of a large
anti-austerity rally. A 65-year-old man collapsed and died from a heart attack
but it was not immediately clear if his death was linked to the sporadic bursts
of tear gas.Elsewhere at the summit, EU President Herman Van Rompuy invited all
27 EU members to attend the December awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo,
adding that the hardships the bloc now faced were nothing compared to the post-war
era.Leaders were to return six hours later from 08:00 GMT, to tackle relations
with China and discuss hotspots Syria, Iran and Mali.
To Those Seized by Debt Fear: China Holds Just 10 Percent, Down From 2 Years Ago
America is not Greece. We are the world's 1 nation, and the U.S. dollar is the world's
reserve currency. Others want to buy our Treasury notes, even at absurdly low
interest rates. History will view our failure to finance the rebuilding of our
roads, bridges, tunnels, water systems, electric grid all due to Republican
obstructionism when others are almost handing us the money to do it as one of
the epic economic follies of all time. Nothing like mindless fanaticism to
spoil a good day or decade, eh?Nor, as the conventional wisdom would have you
believe, have we "mortgaged ourselves to China."How many times
do we hear the forces of doom primarily from the right wing that wants to end
just about everything government does that can help the American people that we cannot going on "borrowing from
China"?Most Americans seem to believe that we have mortgaged our entire
country to China, and that it is only a matter of time before China "forecloses."
Not only would it tank the Chinese economy if it tried to
"foreclose," but and here's the key point China only owns 10 percent
of our debt.Ten percent. And, that is down from 12 percent just two years ago.Mitt Romney, in
debate #1, said that he liked Big Bird and Jim Lehrer, but "he could not
borrow money from China to pay for it."I attended a major economic forum
at Stanford University earlier this year. Niall Ferguson, Harvard Professor of Economics,
talked about the dangers of debt by raising the specter that we are fighting
wars we are "borrowing from China" to pay for. The
audience, that included some of the world's leading economists and financial
managers, nodded their heads. [I raised my hand to object, but did not get
called on].There may be many reasons why increasing the debt is not a good idea
e.g., the interest payments required when interest rates return to more normal
levels, and the need for us to have reserves to fund the retirement of the
boomers, but the Bushies blew that surplus 10 years ago.But the concern that
China is funding our spending is another fiction drummed up by the
establishment and fed to us day after day by the lamestream (Sarah, I will
always thank you for this one, you got this right!) media, too lazy to say
even, "wait a minute, just how much of our debt does China hold?" to
the bloviating head-nodding establishment types that appear on our news as
"experts." [One might add that, even if China did hold 50 percent of
our debt, calling the loans would hurt them more than us, but why bother with
such complexities.Indeed, I have yet to hear anyone object to this canard. If
they did, one suspects they would never be invited back on the program again,
because they have violated the sacred belief system.And, would it not make them
apoplectic if they had to acknowledge that, in the last two years under
President Obama, the amount owed China has declined to 10 percent, from 12 percent, of our debt. Now, that would be a real
stick-in-the-eye.
Gun Industry Thrives During Obama's First Term
Tennessee lawyer Brian Manookian says he never considered himself a gun
enthusiast. He owns just one handgun and was raised in a gun-free home. But the
firearms industry has proven so successful in recent years that he decided to
give up practicing law and make guns his livelihood.It's a decision that's put
Manookian on track to earn four times what he made as a corporate health care
attorney, a job that earned him six figures right out of law school, he
said.And he's far from alone. An analysis by The Associated Press of data
tracking the health of the gun industry shows that President Barack Obama has
presided over a heyday for guns.Sales are on the rise, so much that some
manufacturers cannot make enough fast enough. Major gun company stock prices
are up. The number of federally licensed, retail gun dealers is increasing for
the first time in nearly 20 years. The U.S. gun lobby is bursting
with cash and political clout. Washington has expressed little interest in
passing new gun laws, despite renewed calls to do so after recent deadly
shootings in Colorado and Wisconsin.Four years ago the gun lobby predicted Obama would be the
"most anti-gun president in American history." Yet it is hard to find
a single aspect of the gun world that isn't thriving."The driver is
President Obama. He is the best thing that ever happened to the firearm
industry," said Jim Barrett, an industry analyst at C.L. King &
Associates Inc. in New York.Obama has made no pledges to push for new gun control
legislation and does not have the support in Congress or among voters even if
he did. During this week's presidential debate, he did suggest renewing a U.S.
ban on assault weapons and coming up with an overall strategy to reduce
violence. But both Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said
the real need is for the government to enforce gun laws already on the
books.Meanwhile, sales are brisk.Since opening a $5 million armory in Nashville
last month, Manookian and his business partner have outdone their own
expectations, selling inventory three to four times faster than they expected.
The facility has high ceilings and granite fixtures in the bathroom and
provides instructional courses and a shooting range in addition to firearms for
sale."It is a very strong investment," Manookian said.Others
agree.For the first time since 1993, the number of federally licensed retail
gun dealers in the U.S. increased slightly in 2010 and 2011. The country added
1,167 licensed retail gun dealers, according to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives records. After the assault weapons ban of 1994 – now
expired – the number of gun dealerships dropped annually until 2010. As of
October 2012, there were 50,812 retail gun dealers – 3,303 more than in 2009."Business
has been very good," said Frederick Prehn, who a year ago opened a small
gun store above his dentistry practice in Wausau, Wis. In the past year,
Prehn has relocated twice to larger spaces and gone from one employee to
eight.Some gun store owners can't keep shelves stocked, said Brian Jones, owner
of Bullseye Shooter's supply in Painted Post, N.Y. Jones said he opened his gun
store in November 2010. In his first year, he said he sold between 600 and 700
guns. A little more than halfway through his second year, he's already sold
700.For the first time in the company's history, Sturm Ruger & Co. Inc.
stopped taking orders for a couple of months this year. Ruger, one of the
nation's largest gun manufacturers, has since resumed taking orders, though gun-sellers
say demand is still outpacing production.Dan Wesson Arms, Inc., a small gun
manufacturer that sells to a niche market, stopped taking orders this spring
because the company had sold out the entire year's production, spokesman Jason
Morton said. The company has stopped taking orders before, but never so early
on the entire line, he said."Wouldn't you want to be in a business where
customers are just begging to hand you money?" said Bill Bernstein, owner
of East Side Gun Shop in Nashville.Obama is not yet through his first term, but
the federal government already has conducted about as many background checks
for gun owners and prospective buyers on his watch as it did during the first
six years of George W. Bush's presidency. In the first 3 1/2 years of the Bush
administration, the FBI conducted about 28 million background checks. During
the same period of the Obama administration, the FBI conducted more than 50
million. The gun industry uses the number of background checks as a reliable
indicator of demand.Ruger and Smith & Wesson represent nearly 30 percent of
the U.S. gun manufacturing industry and lead the market in production of pistols
and revolvers, according to government statistics. The two companies have been
running production lines around the clock, hiring workers and operating at
maximum capacity, said Barrett, an industry analyst who also owns Ruger
stock.Ruger's sales have increased 86 percent since Obama took office, and
Smith & Wesson's sales have gone up nearly 44 percent, compared with 18 percent
for overall national retail sales.And the companies have big expectations for
the industry's future, as they're spending more money on research and
development than ever before.The NRA itself has done well, too. The lobbying
organization has had more cash on hand during the Obama years than it had since
2004, finishing 2010 with more than $24 million, according to the most recent
figures available."Which makes it incredibly ironic that the gun lobby is
opposing Obama," said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to
Prevent Gun Violence. Gross said Obama, who initially campaigned to reinstate
the assault weapons ban that expired under Bush, has done what he said was
"disappointingly little" on gun control.But the gun lobby says the
success of the industry does not indicate that Obama is good for Second
Amendment rights."This is the most dangerous election in our
lifetimes," NRA chief executive officer Wayne LaPierre said in February, a
point he's made regularly during the NRA's campaign to defeat Obama.The gun
lobby stands by its 2008 predictions that Obama would be anti-gun. NRA
spokesman Andrew Arulanandam noted Obama's appointment of two Supreme Court
justices whom the NRA considers anti-gun, plus Obama's support of a United
Nations arms trade treaty and the botched operation called Fast and Furious,
which the NRA says was concocted as part of a plan to enforce new gun
restrictions."Gun owners and hunters fear that a second Obama
administration with no future political campaigns to worry about will try to
destroy this great American freedom," Arulanandam said.Fears of a
Democratic president taking office and issuing stricter gun control laws led to
an initial spike in gun sales in 2008, giving dealers some of the highest
profit margins they'd ever seen. But even after it became clear Obama was not
going to make gun control a priority as president, the industry has continued
to do well.Fear of crime may be driving some sales. The number of violent
crimes rose by 18 percent in the U.S. in 2011, according to
Justice Department figures released this week. It was the first year-to-year
increase for violent crime since 1993, marking the end of a long string of
declines.Firearm sales typically increase during poor economic times, said
Steve Sanetti, chief executive officer and president of the National Shooting
Sports Foundation, a trade association for the industry. More Americans are
hunting and shooting for recreation as well, he said. Sanetti attributes that
to military servicemen and women with firearms experience returning to civilian
life and wanting to keep up with shooting as a pastime. He also said
recreational shooting is a relatively cheap and accessible hobby, drawing in
new buyers.Voters have made clear that gun control isn't a priority. A recent AP-National Constitution Center poll found that 49
percent of adults felt laws limiting gun ownership infringe on the public's
right to bear arms, while 43 percent said such laws do not infringe on those
rights. After the recent mass shootings in Colorado and Wisconsin, 52 members
of Congress sponsored a bill to track bulk sales of ammunition, but the
legislation went nowhere.The firearms industry entrepreneur Manookian said it
is clear that guns are a priority for Americans. People around the country are
waiting in lines at shooting ranges, he said, cash registers at gun stores are
ringing with $1,000 purchases and his brand new armory in Nashville is in the black two
weeks after it opened.
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