One of the expressions of the European Commission's dialogue with churches and religious communities is the annual high-level meeting with religious leaders. This year, the EU Commission dedicated the high level meeting to 'Intergenerational Solidarity: Setting the Parameters for Tomorrow's Society in Europe,' as 2012 marks the 'European year for active aging and solidarity between generations'. The COMECE Bishops also dedicated their Spring Plenary Assembly this year to this topic and underlined that generations cannot live only for themselves but they have to rely on each other.

A WORK-FREE SUNDAY IN EU

In this context, Bishop Gianni Ambrosio of Piacenza-Bobbio, Italy and COMECE Vice-President, emphasized the necessity for Europe and its MEMBER STATES TO PRESERVE SUNDAY AS A COMMON WEEKLY DAY OF REST. "Especially for the family, for the spiritual life of its members and for human relations, both inside the family and with relatives and friends, THE COMMON SUNDAY REST IS OF FUNDAMENTAL IMPORTANCE," he said. He recalled that churches together with major trade unions and civil society organizations have joined forces to protect A WORK-FREE SUNDAY IN EU AND IN MEMBER STATES’ LEGISLATION.

The official request was made more than a month ago but so far the Vatican Bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works, has refused to disclose any records of the account held by father Ninni Treppiedi – who is currently suspended from serving as a priest.

Investigators want to know more about vast sums of money that are said to have passed through his account to establish if they were money laundering operations by on the run Mafia Godfather, Matteo Messina Denaro. The reports emerged in the Italian media and came just two weeks after the head of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was sacked amid claims of power struggles and corruption within the Holy See which have been linked to the leaking of sensitive documents belonging to Pope Benedict XVI.

The latest development comes as prosecutors in the Vatican continue to question the Pope's butler Paolo Gabriele, 46, in connection with the leaking of documents which then ended up in a whistle blowing book published by an Italian journalist called His Holiness. No-one from the Vatican was immediately available to comment.

But what’s really happening now is that the general public is getting a look under the bonnet of the financial system. And they’ve discovered that the engine of the sleek-bodied sportscar that delivered them the illusion of wealth in the good times, is in fact a mass of loose screws and unsheathed wiring held together with sticky tape and false promises.

I suspect that Libor is just the tip of the iceberg.

For example: what if I told you that the vast majority of gains seen in the stock market over the last 18 years were all down to the actions of a single bank? A piece of quite staggering research came out from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York last week. It hasn’t received quite the attention it deserves over here yet. But then, nor did the Libor scandal when it first broke.

Lucca and Moench took a look at the action in stocks since 1994. That’s when the Federal Reserve started announcing its decision on interest rates regularly at 2:15pm on given days, eight times a year. (Similarly to the way the Bank of England does it, only our mob do it once a month).

Here’s what they found. Stocks moved significantly higher in the 24 hours before the Fed’s announcement.

How significantly?

Very.

Say Lucca and Moench, “more than 80% of the annual equity premium has been earned over the 24 hours preceding scheduled” Fed announcements. IF IT WASN’T FOR THE FED, THEN THE S&P 500 WOULD TODAY BE STRUGGLING TO HOLD THE 600 MARK, RATHER THAN WRESTLING WITH 1,300.

To Wall Street chiefs, the success of Britain’s financial centre was just as galling. America is supposed to be the leader of the free world, and yet somehow it was London that emerged as the true global capital, a magnet for the smartest financiers on the planet. The European Commission has been out to destroy the City since its inception, horrified at how the eurozone’s launch only accelerated the exodus from Frankfurt. Yet for almost two decades, London has seemed indomitable.

No longer. The City today stands more vulnerable than at any point in its modern history with the Americans, the Japanese and even the Swiss launching their own investigations into skulduggery over the Libor rate-fixing scandal. Their collective ambition is becoming increasingly clear. It doesn’t matter if the Libor rigging was only being cooked up by a handful of traders in one niche of the City.

Here is a chance, perhaps the best they will ever get, to declare the entire place corrupt and claw some business back.

Such discussions are preliminary, and it is unclear if regulators will enter these talks, aimed at resolving allegations that banks attempted to manipulate the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, a benchmark that underpins hundreds of trillions of dollars in contracts. Still, there are powerful incentives for the banks to enter joint negotiations.

Barclays Plc was the first to settle with US and British regulators, paying a $453 million penalty and admitting to its role, in a deal announced June 27. Its chief executive, Bob Diamond, abruptly quit the next week, bowing to public pressure and erosion of the bank's reputation.

The sources told Reuters that none of the banks involved now want to be second in line for fear that they will get similarly hostile treatment from politicians and the public. Bank discussions about a group settlement initially took place before the Barclays agreement, and picked back up in the aftermath. It is unclear which banks are involved in the potential settlement talks. More than a dozen banks are being investigated in the scandal, including Citigroup, HSBC, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase. They all declined to comment.

Anecdotal evidence and economic assumptions suggest that a record number of farmers are likely preparing to file insurance claims this year, opting to plow under their withered crops - some without bothering to administer the costly pesticides and weed killers that might help salvage a dwindling harvest.

Call it "moral hazard" in the heartland: with the growing use of federally backed crop insurance, a shift toward larger policies and newer schemes that protect revenue, some experts say farmers may now be better off claiming a total loss than eking out a shrunken harvest - a move that could exacerbate a 50 percent surge in corn prices by further reducing supply.

"Why spend money trying to save a crop when every bushel of crop you save is then going to reduce the indemnity that you would otherwise receive?" said Vince Smith, an economist at Montana State University who has been critical of the program. Under a master agreement with the industry, the US Department of Agriculture pays an average 60 cents of each $1 of the premium. It subsidized up to $1.3 billion a year in overhead costs, and it shares the burden in case of catastrophe.

“And I’m saying an extra prayer now. If I had a rain prayer or a rain dance I could do, I would do it.” In a statement, Tom Flynn, the executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism, said Vilsack's mention of prayer “sends the wrong message to distraught farmers.” “Praying for rain? That’s not just government entangling itself with religion, that’s government publicly practicing it, and wallowing in superstition,” he said.