EES: Euro Overvalued at current levels

Europe's demand for steel fell 8% in the last year, according to the world's largest steelmaker by volume.

Steelmaker ArcelorMittal (MT) on Friday took a $4.3 billion write-down on the value of its flailing European division and said it sees little prospect for an improvement in the region's sluggish economy any time soon.

Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal, the world's biggest steelmaker by volume, said the goodwill-impairment charge will be included in its fourth-quarter earnings. The news resulted in a downgrade by Fitch Ratings, the third by a ratings firm since August.

The significance of this information is that it shows that real demand for steel in the 'real' economy (manufacturing, shipping, etc.) is down, whereas in the U.S. it's up. For Europe, this is a bad economic sign. Similar to the Baltic Dry Index, a decline in steel indicates a decline in the real economy.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1081561-euro-overvalued-at-current-levels-and-due-for-a-sell-off

The gift of a clean computer - Happy Holidays from EES

Elite E Services would like to wish you and yours a happy holiday.

We thought about a great gift we could give our clients, partners, and friends.  What better than a gift of a clean computer?

Get CCleaner Free 

Download
Latest Version
3.98MB

Cleans all areas of your Computer

Internet Explorer
Temporary files, history, cookies, Autocomplete form history, index.dat.

Firefox
Temporary files, history, cookies, download history, form history.

Google Chrome
Temporary files, history, cookies, download history, form history.

Opera
Temporary files, history, cookies.

Safari
Temporary files, history, cookies, form history.

Windows
Recycle Bin, Recent Documents, Temporary files and Log files.

Registry Cleaner
Advanced features to remove unused and old registry entries

If you require something a little more in depth, we can recommend System Mechanic - save $20 by ordering through our coupon link below:

Get the new System Mechanic 11.5 for only $29.95 [normally $49.95]. Save $20! Coupon code: ELEVEN

Holiday Specials Forex VPS Domains and Hosting

Happy Holidays - Get specials on Forex VPS, Domain Names, Web Hosting, and other electronic products from Elite E Services:

Order VPS from FX System Hosting CNS Forex VPS

$3.99 .US Domains - If you're looking for the perfect addition to your current registered domains — or looking for something fresh and easy-to-remember — .US is it. But remember, you must have a presence in the United States in order to register a .US domain.

$3.99/month Wordpress hosting - While WordPress makes it easy to create an amazing blog or website, our world-class Web hosting makes it just as easy to get the most out of your site. WordPress Hosting from Vector Informatics keeps your site running smoothly, even when your latest post goes viral, by automatically spreading traffic spikes across multiple servers. Plus, our advanced performance and security means your site is lightning-fast and your visitors are safe.

$4.99/month Website Protection Scanner - Site Scanner identifies malware links and security gaps on your website that could allow a hacker to steal information, vandalize your site or infect your customers. Our daily vulnerability scan looks for threats and gives you recommendations on how to fix them. Find a tough one? Call our hotline for FREE help from our security experts.

Fiscal Cliff's Dirty Secret: It's Not About Taxes At All, But Too Much Spending

There's a lot of talk right now about an impending fiscal cliff. But we already went over a cliff economically in this country a long time ago.

The current debate over tax hikes is an empty one built upon a false premise. The debate is whether raising tax rates will address our current crisis. The premise is that it is a lack of taxation that has led to the crisis. Both are hopelessly wrong.

President Obama's proposed tax increases on the top 2% of earners would fund the federal government for about eight days. Even if we taxed Americans earning over $1 million on 100% of their income, we would raise only about $600 billion in revenue.

Taxing citizens at this level is a tyranny even Europe hasn't reached, and still it would only address about one-third of our deficit.

If one actually does the math, "taxing the rich" turns out to be no real solution at all, only fantasyland rhetoric.

Every dollar the government takes is another dollar used unproductively. Every dollar removed from the private sector and wasted in the hands of bureaucrats is a dollar that will not be used to purchase goods, to pay for services or to meet a payroll.

Every dollar the government ever takes — today, tomorrow and forever — is an attack on jobs and the economy.

Instead of sitting around trying to think of new ways to vote away someone else's money, Washington leaders should finally begin to address the real crisis that has threatened us long before the current handwringing: spending.

With a $16 trillion national debt and well over $1 trillion annually in deficits, we barreled over the edge of fiscal insolvency long before this month.

http://news.investors.com/print/ibd-editorials-perspective/121812-637557-fiscal-cliff-tax-debate-skirts-real-issue-too-much-spending.aspx 

Breaking: NYSE sold to ICE for 8.2 Billion

NYSE-Euronext is a 220 year old icon of global finance, but its 12 year-old Atlanta-based rival, IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) will buy it for $8.2 billion, according to a deal that has just been announced.

This revelation surprised a lot of people on the Street who thought all the exchange horse trading of 2010-2011 was over. In 2011, for example, the Justice Department blocked ICE and Nasdaq's attempt to buy the NYSE. NYSE was also stopped from merging with Germany's Deutsche Borse.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-stock-exchange-acquired-2012-12#ixzz2FbY1vfFi

EES: Marijuana May Be The Next Big Growth Sector

We've all seen in the news US states such as Colorado legalizing and making marijuana smoking legal.

Public support for further legalization is building. There is also talk thatmore states could soon legalize. Since this is a new growth industry, we can only speculate in what direction it will grow. But what's clear, plans to keep Marijuana illegal have gone up in smoke.

Read More: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1067361-marijuana-may-be-the-next-big-growth-sector-in-the-u-s-stock-market 

US Dollar Long Term Chart

Fed Targets Foreign Banks With Stricter Capital Rules

More than two dozen foreign banks with at least $50 billion of global assets would face stricter U.S. capital rules under a Federal Reserve plan that’s aimed at lowering risks to the financial system.

The Fed staff proposed that most of the banks also be forced to comply with more stringent liquidity rules and pass stress tests analyzing how they would fare in a severe economic downturn, the central bank said today in an outline of the proposal. The board will vote today on whether to seek public comment on the plan, which would take effect in July 2015.

Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), based in Frankfurt, and London-based Barclays Plc (BARC) would be among the institutions that would have to keep more easy-to-sell assets in the U.S. and face restrictions on distributing capital to parent companies. The Fed provided $538 billion of emergency loans to the U.S. units of European banks during the financial crisis, almost as much as it did to domestic firms. That increased political pressure on lawmakers and regulators to tighten rules for all lenders.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-14/fed-targets-foreign-banks-with-stricter-capital-rules.html

New FX Trade Repository Launch on Track

Testing is well under way for a long-awaited repository service that will store trade data for the $4-trillion-a-day global foreign exchange market, says the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, which expects to go live with the new system on schedule in December.

DTCC has been working with the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, to build the trade repository as part of a looming regulatory overhaul of global financial markets.

In the wake of the global financial crisis, the Group of 20 leading economies pledged three years ago to bring trading of over-the-counter derivatives onto exchanges or approved electronic platforms before the end of 2012. They also agreed to improve overall market transparency by reporting trade data to a global trade repository.

In an interview with Dow Jones Newswires, David Thomas, who is managing the project for DTCC, said it remains on course to meet this deadline.

"We've had around 22 firms in doing some form of testing and the majority of submissions are now successful," he said.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444180004578015843366922464.html

Europe clings to scorched-earth ideology as depression deepens

The strategy of triple-barrelled contraction across a string of inter-linked countries has been the greatest policy debacle since the early 1930s. The outcome over the last three years has been worse than forecast at every stage, and in every key respect.

The eurozone has crashed back into double-dip recession. It will contract a further 0.3pc next year, according to a chastened European Central Bank. The ECB omitted mention of its own role in this fiasco by allowing all key measures of the money supply to stall in mid-2012, with the time-honoured consequences six months to a year later.

The North has been engulfed at last by the contractionary holocaust it imposed on the South. French car sales crashed 19pc last month, even before its fiscal shock therapy -- 2pc of GDP next year. The Bundesbank admitted on Friday tore up its forecast on Friday. Germany itself is in recession.

The youth jobless rate has reached 58pc in Greece, 55.8pc in Spain, 39.1pc in Portugal, 36.5pc in Italy, 30.1pc in Slovakia, and 25.5pc in France, with all the known damage this does to the life-trajectory of the victims and the productive dynamism of these economies.

EU policy elites blame "labour rigidities". The United Nation’s economic arm UNCTAD counters that the EU demand for "wage compression" is itself perpetuating the crisis.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/9733486/Europe-clings-to-scorched-earth-ideology-as-depression-deepens.html

Financial education evades even school officials

More than 200 school districts across California are taking a second look at the high price of the debt they've taken on using risky financial arrangements. Collectively, the districts have borrowed billions in loans that defer payments for years — leaving many districts owing far more than they borrowed.

In 2010, officials at the West Contra Costa School District, just east of San Francisco, were in a bind. The district needed $2.5 million to help secure a federally subsidized $25 million loan to build a badly needed elementary school.

Charles Ramsey, president of the school board, says he needed that $2.5 million upfront, but the district didn't have it.

Why would you leave $25 million on the table? You would never leave $25 million on the table.

- Charles Ramsey, school board president, West Contra Costa School District

"We'd be foolish not to take advantage of getting $25 million" when the district had to spend just $2.5 million to get it, Ramsey says. "The only way we could do it was with a [capital appreciation bond]."

Those bonds, known as CABs, are unlike typical bonds, where a school district is required to make immediate and regular payments. Instead, CABs allow districts to defer payments well into the future — by which time lots of interest has accrued.

http://www.npr.org/2012/12/07/166745290/school-district-owes-1-billion-on-100-million-loan 

US Congress bans word 'lunatic' in federal legislation

Who says Washington can’t get anything done?

Our duly elected representatives have a reputation for being forever locked in disagreement, but apparently they can reach a conclusion when facing issues of linguistic politics. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted 398-1 in support of a bill banning the use of the word “lunatic” in all federal legislation, the BBC reported.

The House vote comes after the Senate approved the motion in May. The bill, which will now be passed on to President Obama for his signature, is intended to erase outdated or derogatory terms from the U.S. legal code.

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/12/06/congress-overwhelmingly-votes-to-ban-the-word-lunatic/#ixzz2EOWAyfsQ
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/12/06/congress-overwhelmingly-votes-to-ban-the-word-lunatic/

Islamic finance faces growth challenges

A steady flow of women wearing hijabs, or Muslim head veils, enter HSBC's Amanah branch in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur during lunch hour.

It's brisk business for the UK lender, which was one of the first global banks to offer Islamic finance - a field that is slowly starting to rival conventional banking in predominantly Muslim countries such as this one.

Islamic finance is based on gaining profits in a socially responsible manner.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20405292?print=true 

EU talks on banking supervision end without agreement

EU finance ministers have failed to reach agreement on setting up a single supervisor for eurozone banks after a meeting in Brussels.

Establishing a single supervisor under the European Central Bank (ECB) is seen as the first step in setting up a Europe-wide banking union.

But German and French ministers in particular clashed over the plans.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble raised concerns about the scope of ECB powers.

He warned that giving the ECB final say on the supervision of eurozone banks could compromise its independence.

Mr Schauble also reiterated his view that it was not reasonable to expect one institution to supervise all 6,000 European banks.

"It would be very difficult to get an approval from German parliament if [the deal] would leave the supervision for all the German banks to European banking supervision," Mr Schauble said.

"Nobody believes that any European institution would be capable of supervising 6,000 banks in Europe."

He also said there had to be a "Chinese wall" between supervision and monetary policy at the ECB.

His French counterpart Pierre Moscovici said the position of France was "steadfast" in support of the proposals.

Cypriot finance minister Vassos Shiarly, who chaired the meeting, called for another gathering to be held on December 12 in the hope of striking a deal.

EU officials are anxious that an agreement is reached before the end of the year.

The plans are seen as central to Europe's response to the eurozone debt crisis and global financial crisis.

"It is of primordial importance that an agreement be reached by the end of the year," said EU economic affairs commissioner Olli Rehn. "It is a test that Europe cannot afford to fail."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20601895?print=true

Global Banking Under Siege as Nations Tighten Local Rules

Global banking, a model promoted for more than 30 years by financial conglomerates cobbled together through cross-border mergers, is colliding with the post-crisis reality of stricter national regulation.

Daniel K. Tarullo, the Federal Reserve governor responsible for bank supervision, announced plans last week to impose the same capital and liquidity requirements on the U.S. operations of foreign lenders as on domestic companies. The U.K. and Switzerland also have proposed banking and capital rules designed to protect their national interests.

Regulators want to curtail risks exposed after global banks such as New York-based Citigroup Inc. (C), Edinburgh-based Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Zurich-based UBS AG (UBSN) took bailouts in the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Forcing lenders to dedicate capital and liquidity to multiple local subsidiaries, rather than a single parent, may undermine the business logic of a multinational structure.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2012-12-05/global-banking-under-siege-as-nations-tighten-local-rules.html