German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told Germany's weekly Focus magazine he was opposed both to broadening the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the euro zone's permanent bailout mechanism, and to stepping up purchases of European sovereign bonds.

"I can't imagine the Bundestag lower house of parliament would give a majority to a policy of unlimited joint liability for Germany. As an MP I certainly couldn't agree to that," he said in an advance copy of the article due to appear on Sunday.

Giving Europe's permanent ESM rescue fund a banking license, as called for by Italy and France, would allow it to tap the European Central Bank for funding so it could intervene more authoritatively in bond markets if needed.

Over the past several decades, there has been increasing pressure on corporations to reduce expenses and increase corporate profits. One of the biggest expenses that any corporation faces is labor. Large corporations all over the globe are in an endless race to gain a competitive advantage by pushing labor costs as low as possible. Sometimes this is done by using technology. Computers, automation, robotics and other forms of technology have eliminated millions of jobs in the United States and those jobs are never coming back.

Millions of other jobs have been eliminated by offshoring. In our globalized economy, American workers have been merged into one giant labor pool with everyone else. That makes it very tempting for big corporations to move jobs from areas where workers are very expensive (such as the United States) to areas of the world where it is legal to pay slave labor wages. When big corporations do this, corporate profits go up, but the number of good jobs in the United States goes down.

As a result, there is increased competition for the jobs that remain in the United States and this drives down wages. Meanwhile, the cost of living just keeps going up. So millions of American families have fallen into poverty in recent years, and millions of others have gone deep into debt in an attempt to survive. This dynamic is absolutely shredding the middle class in the United States.

If Germany allows the ECB to go down this path, Germany will end up experiencing tremendous inflation and the only benefit for Germany will be that the eurozone was kept together. That doesn't sound like a very good deal for Germany.

Financial journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard recently described what is at stake in all of this....

"Failure to halt a full-blown debt debacle in Spain and Italy at this delicate juncture - with China, India and Brazil by now in the grip of a broken credit cycle and the US on the cusp of fresh recession even before the “fiscal cliff” hits - would tip the entire global system into a downward spin, triggering the sort of feedback loop that caused such havoc in late 2008. As I have written about so frequently, time is running out for the global financial system."

WSI Oak Ridge, the contractor responsible for protecting the facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is owned by the international security firm G4S, which was at the center of a dispute over security at the London Olympic Games. Officials said the facility was shut down on Wednesday at least until next week after three activists cut through perimeter fences to reach the outer wall of a building where highly enriched uranium, a key nuclear bomb component, is stored.

The activists painted slogans and threw what they said was human blood on the wall of the facility, one of numerous buildings in the facility known by the code name Y-12 that it was given during World War Two, officials said. While moving between the perimeter fences, the activists triggered sensors that alerted security personnel. But officials conceded the intruders were still able to reach the building's walls before security personnel got to them.

Peter Stockton, a former congressional investigator and security consultant to the Energy Department, expressed skepticism at government assertions the nuclear material was not at risk. "It is unbelievable this could happen," Stockton said. "The significance is outrageous. If they were terrorists, they could have blown open the door and got inside." Stockton said the security breach was the "worst we've ever seen."

Eleven miles of electric fencing charged with 5,000 volts of electricity and topped with razor wire separating the Olympic site from the rest of London; entrances to major venues guarded by soldiers, and surrounding streets patrolled by police heavily armed with automatic weapons, a rare sight in Britain.

One of the Royal Navy's largest warships docked on the river Thames as a staging post for military helicopters, some carrying snipers and special forces personnel ready to take out dangerous elements; another of the world's most advanced warships also stationed on the river; 6 missile sites dedicated to intercepting hostile aircraft; surface-to-air missile systems, scanning the skies to down any airborne threats, installed on the roofs of residential buildings; advanced fighter jets patrolling the sky above London.

Four of the most advanced aircraft developed by the European Union enforcing a strict no-fly zone around the city; unmanned drones flying above London to provide surveillance for security forces; helicopters with powerful imaging equipment to identify faces, clothes, even the smallest detail on any suspect individuals; thousands of street cameras feeding data to face-recognition software to spot any known hostile person from the crowds.

Armed FBI, CIA and Interpol officers in their hundreds are in London to help Scotland Yard. Londoners do not forget the tragic link between Islamic terrorism and these games: London won its bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games on 6th July 2005, the day before the 7/7 bombings.

Welcome to the Halal, Ramadan, Jihad Games.

In 1999, Bill Clinton's Republican-controlled 106th Congress amended Public Law 95-128, 12 USC § 2901, Jimmy Carter's 1977 Community Reinvestment Act to reduce what that legislation called discriminatory credit practices against minorities in impoverished areas — a banking practice known as "red-lining." The Clinton law, actually concocted by Republicans to curry favour from minorities voters, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, was officially known as The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999.

It forced banks to make home loans guaranteed by Fannie Mae to low income families who were not "sound financial risks" for mortgages. It should have been called "The Mortgage Industry Implosion Time Bomb Act of 1999" because the 106th Congress lit the fuse. It took six years for the economic time bomb to explode and for the American mortgage industry to implode.

In his book, Bailout: Why TARP Failed, Barofsky said that Washington used our tax dollars to abandon Main Street while rescuing Wall Street. Barofsky said when he got to Washington he "...saw that Washington had been hijacked by a small group of very powerful Wall Street Banks. They captured regulators ideology ...and what I saw was TARP went from a programme that was supposed to help Main Street reinvigorate the economy, restart the economy and help home owners, turn into a programme that really only served the financial elites on Wall Street."

The reason: Its CEO Dan Cathy opposes same-sex marriage. In an interview with the Baptist Press, Mr Cathy was asked his views on the issue. He said that he supports the “biblical definition of the family unit.” Meaning — horror of all horrors — that Mr Cathy believes marriage should be between a man and a woman. That such a common-sense view could be controversial in today’s America shows how far society has fallen.

Anti-Christian activists immediately called for a boycott of Chick-fil-A. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel publicly vilified the chain. He claimed that Chick-fil-A does not share “Chicago values.” Mr Emanuel said the restaurant was not welcome in the Windy City. Yet, he warmly embraced Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. According to Mr Emanuel, a Christian family man expressing his private opinion defending traditional marriage is an extremist, while a radical black nationalist and vile anti-Semite is acceptable.

It is not just Mr Farrakhan. Planned Parenthood, porn merchants and gay pride parades are celebrated in Mr Emanuel’s Chicago. They are invited to come and stay. Killing unborn babies, selling smut and promoting the LGBT community — these are supposedly “Chicago values.” Christianity isn’t. Our ruling elites despise the moral traditions that were common only a generation ago. They are implementing a social revolution, seeking to abolish America’s Christian heritage. They are radicals — moral anarchists — masquerading as liberals. They are political thugs who in the name of “diversity” seek to impose secular uniformity.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said that “Chick-fil-A doesn’t belong in Boston.” He even wrote a letter to Mr Cathy warning the company will not get the licenses needed to open two new restaurants in the Boston area. In short, Mr Menino was engaging in economic intimidation. His message was clear: Change your views or else take your business (and jobs) elsewhere.

This is an assault on freedom of speech and religious liberty — a dangerous violation of the First Amendment. Messrs Emanuel and Menino are essentially telling the owner of a private, family-owned business what he can or can’t believe about certain issues. And unless Mr Cathy toes the liberal-progressive line, his company will be punished and denied the ability to expand. It is a naked attempt to criminalize and delegitimize Christian views; to equate opposition to homosexual marriage with hate speech.