Spain: Catalonia prepares for rule by Skype- by Andrew Rettman

The two biggest parties in Catalonia have vowed to put Carles Puigdemont back in office despite Madrid's threat to maintain direct rule if they go ahead.

The Junts per Catalunya (JxCat) and ERC parties told El Nacional, a Spanish newspaper, on Tuesday (16 January), that Puigdemont was preparing to be invested as president of the region on 31 January and to carry out his future duties via videolink on online platforms such as Skype from his self-imposed exile in Brussels.

They said he would do it "due to legal imperative".

"I promise to act with complete fidelity to the will of the people of Catalonia," Puigdemont, whose JxCat party came second in regional elections in December, added.

The statement of intent came after the Catalan parliament's own lawyers said on Tuesday that a videolink investiture would have no legal basis.

Note EU-Digest: When is Mr. Piedemont going to "grow-up" and return to Spain to face the Judge in Madrid? It is also high time Belgium stops sitting on their hands and extradites Mr. Piedemont back to Spain. The Catalan voters should also start questioning the Catalan local government at which point they are ending this charade and stop financing Mr. Piedemont's non-productive activities in Belgium with tax payers money.  

Read more: Catalonia prepares for rule by Skype

Helicopter Money: Why Some Economists Are Talking About Dropping Money From the Sky - by Neil Erwin

For years, central banks have been doing everything they can think of to try to get higher inflation and stronger growth. The next step just may be a metaphorical helicopter, high above Tokyo. The Bank of Japan met Friday to decide on the next steps in its long battle against deflation, or falling prices, and analysts had thought it might pursue some coordinated effort with the Japanese government using an idea with a long historical lineage.

“Helicopter money” is the term economists and market-watchers use for an aggressive form of monetary stimulus — the government’s power to print money — to try to spur growth and get inflation higher. There had been buzz that the Bank of Japan could move in that direction, but it elected to take only a smaller action. The bank did say it would do a “comprehensive review” of policy in the months to come that could presage more coordination between the bank and the Japanese government.

It is an idea based on a metaphor used by the renowned economist Milton Friedman nearly five decades ago and given new life in this century by Ben Bernanke. It is also a policy that has echoes of some of the great catastrophes of economic history. And regardless of what, if anything, the Japanese central bank does this fall, if the global economy’s deflationary doldrums continue, expect the discussion around these metaphorical helicopters to get louder. They say desperate times demand desperate measures. Helicopter money is what monetary policy desperation looks like.

Read complete report  - click hrtr Helicopter Money: Why Some Economists Are Talking About Dropping Money From the Sky - The New York Times

Canada: How Saudi Arabia, and a $15B armoured vehicle deal, became an election issue - by Mark Gollom

The issue of whether Canada should be involved in such a deal with a country with a poor human rights record carried forward Friday. Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, as he did the night before, defended the $15-billion deal that Canada helped secure last year, under which the London, Ont.-based manufacturer General Dynamics Land Systems will sell armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia.

At a campaign stop in Rivière-du-Loup, Que., Harper was asked whether he was putting Canadian jobs ahead of human rights concerns.

"As I've said in the debate, it's frankly all of our partners and allies who were pursuing that contract, not just Canada. So this is a deal frankly with a country, and notwithstanding its human rights violations, which are significant, this is a contract with a country that is an ally in the fighting against the Islamic State.

A contract that any one of our allies would have signed," he said.

"We expressed our outrage, our disagreement from time to time with the government of Saudi Arabia for their treatment of human rights, but I don't think it makes any sense to pull a contract in a way that would only punish Canadian workers instead of actually expressing our outrage at some of these things in Saudi Arabia."

Note EU-Digest: what a weak excuse by Stephen Harper. It shows once again that most Conservatives, where ever they may be  always choose money over principles.

Read more: How Saudi Arabia, and a $15B armoured vehicle deal, became an election issue - Politics - CBC News

European Wealth: The Richest People In Europe

With 468 billionaires, Europe claims 28% of the world’s ten-figure fortunes adding up to an aggregate net worth of $1.95 trillion. Russia leads the count with 111 billionaires – the same number as the state of California – while Germany has the second-highest, boasting 85 ten-digit fortune.

The United Kingdom is home to 47 billionaires, slightly more than its neighbor across the Channel, France, which claims 43 billionaires. Georgia, Guernsey, Lithuania and Romania each have just one billionaire.

An indication of a strong economy, Germany saw 26 new super-fortunes in 2014, earning it the third-highest number of billionaire freshman. Only the U.S.A and China had more first-time billionaires.

This week, Europe’s richest man, Amancio Ortega, saw his net worth fall 3.1%, to $62 billion. He is now the world’s fourth-richest person following downgrades of Ortega Inditex, the parent company of his retailer, Zara.

No European has ever landed the top spot on Forbes’ global wealth list, but the continent is home to the world’s richest woman, Liliane Bettencourt. Aged 91, the French cosmetics queen is worth $34.5 billion, thanks to her L’Oréal empire.

A third of Europe’s 52 richest, listed below, earned their fortunes in fashion and retail, including brand names Miuccia Prada and Giorgio Armani, as well as H&M giant Stefan Persson, who is third-wealthiest in the continent. (Not all industries are as glamorous; German Georg Schaeffler made his $14.3 billion from ball bearings.)

Prada is just one of six women in this shortlist of Europe’s richest. She is joined in this elite group by Bettencourt, BMW’s Susanne Klatten and Johanna Quandt, beverage inheritor Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken and oil heir Carrie Perrodo.

Several of Europe’s richest live outside their country of citizenship. Though an Irish passport holder, Pallonji Mistry lives in Mumbai, India. Hansjoerg Wyss lives in Wilson, Wyoming, while both Wertheimer brothers live in New York.

Read more: he Richest People In Europe

Ukraine: Goodbye Cold War (and Democracy), hello globalized economy - by Remi Piet

It's all about money now

While most observers claim that the current conflict over Ukraine is reminiscent of the Cold War, a political economy analysis of the last three days would au contraire underline how liberal economic interdependence has modified the rules of the game. 

If the sound of boots on the ground is still very real in Crimea, the Ukrainian conflict proved the incapacity of countries to engage in military conflict without being vulnerable to exogenous economic forces or having to suffer the consequences of capital flight and currency exchange rate fluctuations. 

The reaction from oligarchs in Ukraine as well as the impact that the prospect of war had on both the Russian stock exchange and currency are solid proof that countries cannot operate bluntly as they did during the Cold War without closely monitoring global economic dynamics. 

While the prospect of targeted economic sanctions such as asset freezing or visa restrictions had been inoffensive in Belarus and mostly inefficient in Syria, it has modified the forces on the exchequer in Ukraine. Viktor Yanukovich did not leave Kiev in the middle of the night because of a military invasion of his country, nor because the few armed militants in Maidan represented such a threat to his security that he had to abandon his lavish lifestyle. 
 
No, he fled because the powerful Ukrainian oligarchs turned their back on him in fear of economic sanctions from Europe that would have meant the end of their industrial empire and freedom of movement. 

Liberal-minded Victor Pinchuk - the billionaire son-in-law of the first Ukrainian president and Russian ally, Leonid Kuchma - and Petro Poroshenko were the first to defect, signing a letter of support to the demonstrators and stating that the European path was the "way to modernise the country, to fight corruption, the way to have a fair court, freedom of press, democracy".

Rinat Akhmetov, commonly considered one of the 40 wealthiest men in the world, put the deepest nail in the newly impeached Ukrainian president's coffin by asking for balanced agreements with Russia and Europe, which meant reopening economic negotiations with Brussels. 

Even Eastern Ukrainian billionaires Igor Kolomoyski and Sergey Taruta, once close to Yanukovich, quickly followed suit when they pledged allegiance to the new Ukrainian prime minister, by accepting governor positions in Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk. 

They claimed to do so to "protect the homeland in danger". Yet the decision from EU-member Austria and Switzerland - which currently faces its own share of EU pressure after last month's immigration referendum - to freeze financial assets, the perspective of not being able to vacation in Nice or Courchevel or meet potential investors in London and Paris, as well as the risk of seeing German car manufacturers turn away from their steel production were surely equally as strong an argument to call for closer European ties. 

The days of the "iron curtain" and of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) which economically isolated the former Soviet Union states from the rest of the world are far behind us.

Note EU-Digest: indeed money in today's world speaks louder than guns and politicians while Democracy has become just an illusion.

Read more: Ukraine: Goodbye Cold War, hello globalised economy - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Money: The Rise of Bitcoin - QuickTake - Is It Real Money If It Doesn't Come From the Mint? By Max Raskin

They’re called Bitcoins, but you can’t put one into your pocket. Don’t try to use it to tip the waiter. So what makes Bitcoin money? The same thing that makes all money money — trust, in this case backed up by a lot of code-breaking computers.

Created in 2009, Bitcoin has grown into the world’s largest virtual currency, traded on exchanges around the world. It’s the product of open-source software and a decentralized network of electronic “miners,” making it a multibillion-dollar experiment in monetary privatization and perhaps the first step toward an age when the digital economy outgrows the restraints of nation states and wallets full of paper.

he value of Bitcoin soared in early 2013 amid a torrent of media coverage, hitting an intraday record high of $266 in April. Some buyers were drawn by a mistrust of central banks they saw as fueling inflation; for them, Bitcoin, which has rigid limits on money supply written into its software, was a safer alternative.

Others liked its anonymity for online transactions, legal or not. But much of the surge was driven by newer investors with more traditional motivation — getting in on the ground floor of a product in demand. In July 2013, the Winklevoss twins of Facebook fame announced that they had bought 1 percent of the Bitcoin in existence and later filed to offer a Bitcoin ETF.

Prominence also brought new problems, however. The largest Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, located in Japan, was  the target of hacking attacks that drove the price down. In the summer of 2013, regulators began to take notice, raising thorny questions of oversight.

Then on Oct. 2, Bitcoin prices plunged by a third after U.S. prosecutors announced the indictment of the operator of Silk Road, an anything-goes online market where drugs and other illicit goods were peddled for Bitcoin. But it soon rebounded to set new highs, and the Justice Department declared in November that Bitcoins can be “legal means of exchange.”

For more: Bloomberg

Moneywise: Britain - Is printing more money the answer?

For the complete report from Moneywise click on this link

Britain - Is printing more money the answer?

With the interest rate rapidly approaching zero, the chancellor Alistair Darling is this week expected to give the Bank of England permission to print more money in an effort to revive the economy. The central bank is expected to announce another base rate cut on 5 March; but with this already at an historical low of 1%, it is fast running out of options to kick-start the UK’s flagging economy. It is anticipated that, immediately after the cut is announced, Darling will give the government’s formal approval for the Bank of England to inject an additional euro 160 billion into the economy through a measure known as quantitative easing.Quantitative easing is often referred to as printing money, but technically no physical notes are produced. Instead, the Bank of England creates more money for itself electronically. The new money is then used to buy assets, such as gilts and bonds, from banks, insurers and pension providers.

Note EU-Digest: Quantitative Easing - Its all economic Hocus Pocus which turns fantasy into Monopoly Money.