For two years, Ireland had poured money on a raging banking crisis, to no avail. Each estimate of the rising price of rescuing Ireland's banks turned out too low. Mr Lenihan needed to halt the drip-drip of bad news that was leading his country to ruin. "I want a final figure ASAP," he told the group. Two weeks later, the estimate came in: Up to 50 billion euros - nearly $50,000 for every household in the Emerald Isle.

But now, investors are betting the bill could be higher still and could reignite Europe's sovereign-debt crisis. The unpopular government is bracing for collapse, and on Tuesday, Irish government bonds continued a week-long slide to a fresh record low. The debt is judged as risky as Greece's was this spring just before that nation begged for a European Union bailout.

Mr Lenihan, racing to ease those fears, proposed Thursday shrinking the country's 2011 budget by 6 billion euros. Proportionally, that's as if the US suddenly eliminated the Defense Department. Ireland's troubles are Europe's. The 16 euro-zone countries have agreed to guarantee up to 440 billion euros in loans if any among them is unable to borrow from private markets.

Clinton made the announcement in a joint video conference with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who has been scrambling to fill a huge projected budget hole as his government expands services in expectation of full eventual statehood.

Ahead of the meeting US President Barack Obama urged leaders to work together for global economic recovery. He earlier said the US would seek to create jobs and reduce global trade imbalances. Washington has blamed these in part on Beijing's alleged manipulation of its currency to help boost Chinese exports, which has led to Beijing amassing huge foreign reserves.

Others, however, say America's economic policies, specifically creating new money to pursue quantitative easing (QE), could also be a form of currency manipulation for its own ends. Speaking to the BBC, the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, said there were "definitely tensions" over currency. "One has to be wary of the tensions because you don't want them to slip into PROTECTIONISM," he said.

Accused of forcing the dollar down to trade its way back to prosperity, Mr Obama is due to hold one-on-one talks with two of the strongest critics of his administration's economic direction - Chinese President Hu Jintao and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "We all now recognize that the foundation for a strong and durable recovery will not materialize if American households stop saving and go back to spending based on borrowing."

During and after the financial crisis, world leaders huddled close, staring together over the precipice. With the danger of an immediate plunge over, they began jostling, and are now pushing. But the cliff edge is still there. Critics, especially in the US, have called for tariffs on Chinese imports unless the yuan is allowed to appreciate. It is feared that other countries will rush to allow currency devaluation to also make their exports more competitive.

Even before the Federal Reserve announced the latest round of quantitative easing, the price of oil has been going up and the price of food has been going up. Now that the Federal Reserve has announced plans to flood the economy with hundreds of billions more dollars, the inflation monster is going to get even hungrier. The household budgets of scores of American families are going to be stretched beyond the breaking point as prices rise.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of US employers will not be giving their workers raises to keep up with inflation. After all, why should they? If someone wants to quit there are hordes of unemployed Americans out there who would just love to take that job in a second.

Quantitative easing is being heralded as the solution to America's economic problems, but for hard working middle class Americans it is only going to make things worse. Inflation is going to soar while wages are going to stagnate at best. This will mean a lower standard of living for average Americans. The kind of "trickle down" economics that the Federal Reserve is trying to play does not work in 2010.

The advocates of quantitative easing believe that by flooding the financial system with massive amounts of new money, banks will eventually start lending it out to average Americans and that will spark an increase in economic activity. But that is not the way the game is played in 2010. What happened with the bailouts and what happened with the last round of quantitative easing is that the big financial institutions took most of that cash and used it to pump up speculative bubbles all over the globe.

We are entering a time that is going to be very difficult on most American families. Many are going to really have to tighten their belts to make it through this. Many others are simply not going to make it and will need our help.

The "good times" that we have been experiencing in America for decades are about to come to an end. All of the debt and all of the greed are catching up with us. A devastating financial collapse is coming and you had better get ready.

Full article:- http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/the-price-of-oil-is-going-up-the-price-of-food-is-going-up-and-now-here-comes-quantitative-easing

Outside, a crowd of thousands surged as placards and banners were set on fire and missiles were thrown. Student leaders condemned the violence as "despicable". They say about 50,000 people took part in a march through Westminster earlier. A stand-off is still taking place between about two dozen demonstrators and the police, with 32 people having been arrested so far.

One of the protesters who got on to the roof was Manchester student Emily Parks. "It shows how angry people are," she told BBC News. "Why is our education being cut? Why are tuition fees going up here when in other parts people have free education? People have felt the need to take matters into their own hands."

Among the crowds at the rally in London were about 400 students from Oxford. Oxford University Student Union President David Barclay said: "This is the day a generation of politicians learn that though they might forget their promises, students won't.

The figure has come to light in a study by the German finance ministry to uncover its crimes while the Nazis were in power, from 1933 until 1945. Hans-Peter Ullmann, a Cologne University history professor who is heading the three-year investigation, said that under the Nazis the tax authorities 'actively worked to destroy Jews financially'.

Tax laws discriminated against Jews from 1934, while some who managed to leave Germany before the Holocaust had much of their wealth confiscated through an 'exit tax'. Nazi officials seized and sold the property of Jews who left or were sent to extermination camps, both in Germany and in the nations conquered during the Second World War.

Professor Ullmann said: 'Conservatively, their money financed at least 30 per cent of the German war effort.'

And it coincides with a rebellion on the Tory backbenches, expected tonight, over controversial changes to the Lisbon Treaty - signed up to by Mr Cameron. The European Court of Auditors yesterday challenged the EU to get a grip on its spending after finding 'material errors' in last year's 88 billion pounds budget. Its president, Vitor Manuel da Silva Caldeira, said about 5 per cent of the budget - some 4 billion pounds - was spent wrongly.

The biggest examples of waste were in agriculture, development aid and fisheries. Auditors found that EU farm subsidies had been handed over to subsidise crops without any proof they were being grown. They visited farmland and found no evidence of cultivation at all. Stephen Booth, analyst at the Open Europe think tank, said: 'This is a hugely embarrassing annual tradition and it remains absolutely unacceptable.'

Deputies drafting a final statement to be released after the Group of 20 summit concludes on Friday remained far apart on pivotal issues, including currency exchange rates, G20 spokesman Kim Yoon Kyung said on Wednesday. "We had to open the door because the debate was so animated and the room was getting hot," he said.

G20 leaders had hoped this week's gathering, the fifth since the financial crisis exploded in 2008, would mark the beginning of a new era of global cooperation. Hosts South Korea printed banners proclaiming a slogan of "Shared Growth Beyond Crisis." But the unity forged in crisis has given way to sometimes-competing national policies that reflect a multi-speed recovery from the recession, prompting critics to question the effectiveness of the G20 grouping itself.

The US Federal Reserve's decision last week to spend another $600 billion on government bond purchases has drawn reproaches from four continents and intensified the G20 debate over how best to bolster the global economic recovery and avoid another financial crisis. Critics charge that the Fed ignored global repercussions - namely a weaker dollar and a flood of cheap cash that could find its way into emerging markets - and violated the cooperative spirit the G20 has worked hard to sustain.

Kim, the G20 spokesman, said 40 to 50 deputies were crammed into a small room for a 14-hour session on Tuesday, and voices were raised when they discussed a framework for balanced growth that G20 leaders hope will be a cornerstone of the summit.

The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office, in a recent report titled "California's Other Budget Deficit," said the state will probably need to raise unemployment taxes on employers as well as reduce benefits to bring the fund back in balance.

But pressure is growing on Sacramento to fix the system soon - whether it wants to or not. California has borrowed about $8.5 billion from the federal government to keep benefits flowing, and the repayment obligations are coming due.

"The longer we go without a fix, the bigger the hole becomes," said Loree Levy, a spokeswoman for the Employment Development Department, which doles out the benefits. She said the US government is scheduled to bill the state about $362 million in interest next year. The Legislature would have to find the money somewhere to pay it; it wouldn't be allowed to dip into the unemployment fund, she said.

Obama's caution came as the Israeli government moved ahead with plans to build nearly 1,300 apartments in that disputed part of the city. Israel has said the plans to seek public comment on the building plans were merely procedural. But the move comes on the heels of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's meeting with Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday.

The 'New York Times' reports:- A few hours later, Mr Netanyahu's office responded with a statement, saying that "Jerusalem is not a settlement; Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel."

Mr Netanyahu was in New York, meeting business people, midway through a visit to the United States that included a speech to a Jewish group in New Orleans on Monday, in which he called on Washington to be more aggressive in threatening Iran with a military strike if it did not give up its nuclear program.

Mr Obama returned fire in the growing confrontation over trade and currencies Monday in a joint news conference with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, taking the unusual step of publicly backing the Fed's decision to buy $600 billion in US Treasury bonds - a move that has come under withering international criticism for weakening the US dollar.

The Fed is independent, and the White House by longstanding tradition has strained to avoid any appearance of collusion or conflict. Mr Obama said the administration doesn't comment on particular actions of the US central bank, before adding: "I will say that the Fed's mandate, my mandate, is to grow our economy. And that's not just good for the United States, that's good for the world as a whole."

The G-20 summit that begins Wednesday night in Seoul is shaping up as a showdown between exporting powers, such as Germany and China, and nations such as the US that are struggling to emerge from recession and high unemployment.

Ahead of the meeting, tensions have flared in particular between German and US officials. US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been pressing member nations to sign up for a framework that would set limits on countries' trade balances. Germany, which relies heavily on exports, has lectured Washington about its economic policies, which Berlin sees as profligate and damaging.

Already, expectations are low for the meeting. The G-20 is struggling to agree on specific targets for Mr Geithner's trade regime. It's also likely to leave unresolved other big questions, such as how to unwind failing international financial institutions, a task made urgent by the recent financial crisis.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble lashed out at US pressure on Berlin to rein in the country's surging exports, telling Der Spiegel magazine, "The American growth model... is stuck in a deep crisis." He said, "It doesn't add up when the Americans accuse the Chinese of currency manipulation and then, with the help of their central bank's printing presses, artificially lower the value of the dollar."

The Convention and Exhibition Center in southern Seoul, which is hosting the event, will use the fish to check the purity of the water supply to restrooms. "The fish also symbolize an eco-friendly water policy, which recycles used water for the restrooms," Oh Su-Young, PR manager at the center, told AFP, adding that they were just part of the inspection process.

The center, which shares its water supply with a neighboring shopping mall and trade center, recycles more than 37 million gallons (142,000 cubic meters) a year at an annual saving of 360 million won (US$322,436).

"The combined production shortfalls and dramatic potential stock drawdowns mean a much tighter supply picture than just a few months ago," the agency said in a separate grains report. Benchmark Chicago corn futures soared above $6 a bushel for the first time since August 2008, before ending lower. Soyabeans rose 4.3 per cent and New York cotton futures posted a record above $1.51 a pound. The price rises have revived fears of a repeat of the global food crisis of 2007-08.

In Europe, milling wheat surpassed a peak reached after Russia banned grain exports in August in response to a devastating drought. Abdolreza Abbassian, senior grains economist at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome, said the report was "alarming".

"It reiterates the tightening of the overall situation as we go into 2011, which means eventually even those basic food commodities that haven't risen so much could be influenced," he said. The FAO food price index is nearing the highs set in mid-2008.

The video shows an enormous condensation trail following a brightly lit object, similar to images seen during a space launch. Colonel Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters the video is so far "unexplained" by anyone in the US Military. The Missile Defense Agency told Fox News it did not launch any test missile last night that could explain the dramatic images. The Navy and the Air Force were also unable to offer an explanation.

"It does not appear that this was a regularly scheduled missile test", Lapan said. Before a missile test the military sends notifications to mariners, airmen, and air traffic controllers to stay clear of the area, and according to Lapan it doesn't appear those warnings were sent. The FAA told Fox News it did not issue any license for a commercial launch. NASA also denied any involvement and said it is checking for any meteorite activity, although it's highly unlikely that is the source of these images.

John Cornelio, a spokesman for Northern Command and NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) told Fox News Tuesday there is no threat to the homeland. "We are very confident this was not fired from a foreign military," Cornelio said. "That's not what we are working with." Cornelio also cautioned the use of the term missile, saying that word suggests the launch of a weapon, which can't be confirmed. "If it was an attack we would have known it and we would have done something about it," Cornelio said.

Dramatic distortions are now looming in the post-crisis global economy. The current global economic order threatens to fall into disarray in several different areas:

* In the wake of the economic and financial crisis, many countries have begun to seal off their markets against foreign products in order to protect domestic producers.

* Two of the world's largest economic powers, China and the United States, seem to be initiating a race to devalue their respective currencies.

* Key emerging economies, most notably Brazil and Indonesia, are imposing restrictions on the movement of capital, which could disrupt the global money cycle.

* In desperation over the grim economic situation, the administration of US President Barack Obama is embarking on a diplomatic offensive intended to pillory countries with chronic trade surpluses. This puts China, Japan and Germany in the line of fire.

Each individual development is cause for concern on its own. But together, they constitute a serious threat to the world economy. The German business model, which builds on the success of the country's export economy, is particularly at risk. Much is at stake for Germany, which is currently experiencing an unexpected employment and growth spurt, due in large part to the substantial competitiveness of its companies in global markets. The German economy is expected to grow by about 3.5 percent this year, perhaps even more.

This success has sparked resentment, particularly among countries that are having a hard time pulling themselves out of the crisis, most of all the United States. The German government is not prepared to bow to the will of the battered hegemon. "The proposal is not acceptable for Germany under any circumstances," German Finance Minister Schauble said in a Spiegel interview. His ministry's policy is clear: "We reject non-cooperative solutions."