Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Thursday 1 January 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 31 Dec 2014 09:07 AM PST


Thousands of recently highly paid workers have been laid off after the oil price plummeted 50 percent in 2014. At least four American oil-producing states are already facing budget problems due to decreasing oil revenues.
The price plunge has affected petroleum production in all oil-extracting countries, including the US.
Currently cheap fuel is still believed to be providing an overall boost to the US economy, as consumers can spend less on gasoline and more on shopping and services. But for the American energy sector the future looks less bright. It’s effecting places like Alaska, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas, the New York Times reports.
US oil experts recall the 1980s oil price downturn, accompanied by economic disasters around the globe and arguably becoming one of the causes of the fall of the Soviet Union. Some experts are positive and say America’s oil-producing states won’t suffer too much because they “diversified their economies.”
This doesn’t apply to the state of Alaska. According to the NYT, approximately 90 percent of state’s budget is formed from oil revenues. Alaska’s government is considering a 50 percent capital-spending cut for bridges and roads in the face of the oil price drop, with Moody’s, the credit rating service, lowering Alaska’s credit outlook from stable to negative.
The state of Louisiana’s 2015-16 budget is going to be $1.4 billion short, with 162 state government positions already eliminated and more to be discontinued starting from January. Contracts and projects are being either reduced or frozen in state agencies. According to the state’s chief economist Greg Albrecht, for every $1 fall in price of an annual average barrel of oil, Louisiana loses $12 million.
For Texas, which has a far larger and more diversified economy than Louisiana, the oil price downturn is no good either. In just October and November Texas lost 2,300 oil and gas jobs, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week. Through the last half a year the state has been losing $83 million in potential revenue every day, the Greater Houston Partnership recently reported. They blamed this on crashing price of its West Texas Intermediate crude oil, which has depreciated to $54.73 per barrel this week, from more than $100 six months ago.
The situation in other oil-extracting states could be even worse. In a study published last year, the Council on Foreign Relations warned the largest job losses caused by sharp decline in oil prices are going to take place in North Dakota, Oklahoma and Wyoming, where the number of drilling rigs is decreasing.
The US oil industry has showed 50 percent employment growth since the recession officially ended in mid-2009, giving jobs to over 779,000 people as of October 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported. A total of 10 million jobs have been associated with the US oil and gas industry, Mark Mills, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, estimated.
Now according to Tom Runiewicz, a US industry economist at IHS Global Insight, if oil stays around $56 a barrel till the middle of the next year, companies providing services to oil and gas industry could lose 40,000 jobs by the end of 2015, while oil and gas equipment manufacturers could slash up to 6,000 jobs.
These workers can earn more than $1,700 a week, much higher than the average $848 a week payment for other workers, the WSJ reported. When experienced workers lose their highly paid jobs, they stop paying their bills.
There are also fears of a house-price slump. Fitch Ratings has already warned that with the price of oil continuing to plummet, home prices in Texas “may be unsustainable.”
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Posted: 31 Dec 2014 08:53 AM PST
A view of the Greek parliament in session.
Parliament in Greece has been dissolved after Prime Minister Antonis Samaras requested the dissolution of the legislature following its failure to choose a new president after three successive rounds of voting.
A statement from the parliament said an early election in the austerity-weary country would be held on January 25, as Samaras announced on Monday, and the new parliament would hold its inaugural session on February 5.
Greece is due to swear in caretaker interior and justice ministers later on Wednesday. The pair will preside over the election process.
The dissolution of the parliament has renewed concerns about political stability in Greece at the heart of the eurozone’s debt crisis.
On Tuesday, Samaras warned that cash-strapped Greece may be forced out of the eurozone if the anti-austerity leftist party, Syriza, wins parliamentary polls next month.
“This struggle will determine whether Greece stays in Europe,” Samaras told the president.
Golden Dawn nationalists have consistently topped opinion polls in recent months, promising to reverse austerity measures that secured an international bailout by the so-called troika of the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank.
Latest opinion polls show that Golden Dawn leads the conservative party by three to six points.
Samaras requested snap elections after Stavros Dimas, his candidate to succeed incumbent President Karolos Papoulias, failed in three attempts to collect the required number of votes to be confirmed in office. Papoulias’ five-year term ends in March.
Greece nearly went bankrupt in 2010, only to survive on international rescue packages. It has received 240 billion euros (USD 330 billion) in international loans.
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Posted: 31 Dec 2014 08:43 AM PST



An elderly man was brutally savaged by a street black thug as he walked through a Bronx neighborhood in broad daylight, a beating the man referred to as a senseless “racial attack.”
Bronx resident William King, 67, is seeing the neighborhood he’s lived in for forty years in a different light after yesterday.
On Monday, King was walking down the sidewalk, near Briggs Avenue and East 197th Street, minding his own business when a man grabbed him from behind, threw him to the ground and began beating him mercilessly.
A home surveillance camera captured the random assault, and shows King’s attacker also had an accomplice keeping watch from across the street.
When it was over, King was worse for wear.
“I got a cut above over my eyelid, and the side of my face is numb, I can’t open my mouth that well and I had a lump the size of a baseball on the side of my head,” King told WABC News.
Close-up illustrates eye injury William King, 67, incurred following beating.
The attack, however, didn’t have the hallmarks of a typical street mugging. Instead, King believes the attack was likely motivated by race.
“I believe it was a racial attack, they weren’t trying to rob me, I had money on me and my wallet and all. They weren’t trying to rob me,” adds King.
Police are asking for the public’s help in tracking down the men, who King referred to as “animals.”
“They’re animals. They’re not human, they’re not human at all,” King said.
King’s attack could be a symptom of the larger racial hysteria stoked by the establishment media and the Justice Department, who are working in lockstep to create division by redirecting outrage stemming from numerous police killings of unarmed Black men.
The same type of misguided retribution followed the death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin, where “social justice activists” carried out retaliatory attacks against innocent citizens in a series of unprovoked “Justice for Trayvon” attacks.
As the race baiting continues, and the divide and conquer tactic pitting black against white proves more and more effective, similar future attacks should be expected.
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Posted: 31 Dec 2014 08:16 AM PST
New Year’s fireworks erupt over Sydney’s iconic Harbor Bridge and Opera House during the traditional fireworks at midnight on January 1, 2015.
People in Australia have celebrated the end of 2014 with dazzling fireworks display to greet the New Year.
More than 1.5 million revelers gathered along the shores of Sydney’s famed harbor to watch the Australian city’s renowned firework display over the Harbor Bridge, Opera House and other points along the water on Wednesday.
Sydney is proud to be one of the first major cities in the world to welcome each New Year; and its celebrations for 2015 included the tropical-style fireworks display, which features vivid gold and silver palm tree pyrotechnic effects.
Some 100,000 pyrotechnic effects as well as shooting comets and shells added up to 7 tons of fireworks that went up in smoke in the city’s harbor.
The Harbor of Light Parade also featured a large number of boats while the Bridge Effect featured 16 kilometers (about 10 miles) of rope light and four kilometers (about 2.5 miles) of electric cable that were held by 10,000 cable ties.
The event is purportedly the most watched New Year’s Eve celebration in the world, while similar events were held in other Aussie cities including Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane.
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Posted: 31 Dec 2014 08:08 AM PST


Sir Winston Churchill’s family begged him to “fight against” the desire to convert to Islam, according to a newly-discovered letter.
“Please don’t become converted to Islam; I have noticed in your disposition a tendency to orientalise, Pasha-like tendencies, I really have,” the letter from Churchill’s future sister-in-law, dated August 1907, says, the Independent reported.
“If you come into contact with Islam your conversion might be effected with greater ease than you might have supposed, call of the blood, don’t you know what I mean, do fight against it,” Lady Gwendoline Bertie, who was soon to marry Churchill’s brother Jack, added.
The letter was found by a historian at Cambridge University, Warren Dockter, while he was researching for his book ‘Winston Churchill and the Islamic World: Orientalism, Empire and Diplomacy in the Middle East’.
The former UK prime minister was greatly interested in Islam and oriental culture, but “never seriously considered converting,” Dockter told the paper.
“He was more or less an atheist by this time anyway. He did however have a fascination with Islamic culture, which was common among Victorians,” he added.
Churchill became acquainted with Islamic culture during his army service in Sudan, and was greatly taken with it.
The researcher noted the possible reason behind the letter, and that those close to Churchill needn’t have been worried. He may have been a great admirer of the culture, but was also critical in his views on Islamic society.
“The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men,” Churchill wrote in 1899 of his experience in Sudan.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 10:39