Roubini Out With Rosy Comments
Hedge Funds Calling for Zimbabwe Hyper Inflation in Greece
Greece is Still Hitting the Skids on Debt Talks With The Troika
***FLASH RUMOR: S&P DOWNGRADES IMMINENT IN EUROPE***
Being reported by Europe and hitting markets.
Comments »The ECB Claims Victory Over the Credit Crunch; Somebody Tell Them its Not Over
China’s Foreign Reserves Fall for the First Time Since the 1998 Asian Contagion
Keep your eye on this issue as it is important that foreign reserves stay balanced for the health of many currencies.
Comments »Tesco Gets Hurt by Weak Holiday Sales
The ECB Hits a Home Run With Cheap Three Year Money
U.S. plans Taliban peace talks
Comments »WASHINGTON – The US plans a major push next week to jump-start peace talks with the Taliban, senior Obama administration officials said, amid the first concrete signs of progress toward a negotiated end to the 10-year-old war in Afghanistan.
The press comes amid the potentially embarrassing emergence of a video Wednesday that appears to show US troops urinating on Afghan insurgents’ corpses. Its authenticity hasn’t been confirmed.
The US special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Marc Grossman, will meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul to seek his approval to resume US negotiations with Taliban representatives over confidence-building measures aimed at laying the ground for direct Afghan-Taliban talks.
Drahgi Says He Sees Substantial Downside Risks
Iran to construct “Islamic Internet”, block Western influence
Comments »New cyber regulations announced by Iran last week, including requiring Internet cafes to install surveillance cameras, could be just a precursor to the Islamic Republic’s “halal” network, many observers are saying.
That network, an “Islamically permissible” intranet that the nation’s telecommunications ministry publicized in early 2011, would disconnect Iran from the rest of the world and run a parallel internal service that would automatically censor material and block popular global sites and search engines, such as Facebook, Google and Wikipedia.
“I don’t think it’s a question of if, but a question of when,” said Austin Heap, executive director of the Censorship Research Center, who also works on developing technologies for increasing Internet freedom.
At the time of the announcement, Iranian authorities said the new infrastructure would be revealed soon, but did not give a specific time frame.
“They are taking the lessons of the 2009 uprisings and figuring out how to prevent that,” Heap said. “A halal network would be only what the regime would want you to see.”
Iran’s network could mirror what Burma, another nation with draconian cyber crackdowns, has done to isolate its people from the Web, limiting users to a national intranet at a high price that deters most potential users.
U.S. Navy bolsters air craft carrier presence in Persian Gulf
I believe that brings total aircraft carriers near Iran to 3, and any subsequent fleet ships that go with them.
Comments »A new aircraft carrier strike group has entered the Arabian Sea and another is on its way, a Pentagon official said in a news briefing Wednesday — a shuffling of the U.S. fleet amid rising tensions with Iran.
Officials said there is no connection between the fleet movements and threats from Iran, however, the arrival of the USS Carl Vinson comes on the heels of Iranian military exercises in the Persian Gulf and threats to block the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil transit route.
And the killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran on Wednesday further escalated tensions, as the Obama administration denied any role in the death.
The U.S. Navy announced Monday that the USS Vinson had arrived in the region to conduct missions in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts.
“We will work closely with our regional partners to demonstrate our commitment to security and stability in the region,” Rear Admiral Thomas Shannon said in a written statement.
Captain John Kirby, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Media Operations, on Wednesday denied U.S. involvement in the killing of the Iranian scientist and said the incident has not changed the U.S. position in the Gulf region.
And the number of carriers in the region “does go up and down, but it’s based on overall broad requirements in the region that the Central Command commander sets and establishes, [it’s] not necessarily … driven by a specific incident,” Capt. Kirby said.
The shift in naval assets in the region, Kirby said, is not linked to Iran’s recent threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, a threat made in response to the West’s sanctions on Iranian oil exports over the country’s contested nuclear program
