Germany vision for European country!

Angela Merkel in Berlin on 2 December - a speech that laid out the German vision to remake the euro bloc

"We have started a new phase in European integration," Angela Merkel told the Bundestag last week.

"There are no quick and easy answers. Resolving the sovereign debt crisis is a process and this process will take years."

Few people outside Germany cared much when the quiet and unassuming chancellor stood to address members in the cold and clinical surroundings of the German parliament on 2 December.

But her words were keenly awaited by the German political elite.

Indeed, the speech may eventually be seen as one of the defining speeches in the recent history of the European Union.

In it, Mrs Merkel outlined the German vision of the future of Europe.

As Europe's largest economy - and biggest contributor so far to the bailouts of Greece, the Irish Republic and Portugal - Germany's view going into this week's EU summit is crucial.

"This is all about avoiding the next crisis," says Martin van Vliet, the senior economist at ING Bank in Amsterdam. "It has little effect on this one."

In the current climate, Mrs Merkel's blueprint for the future of the 27-member EU - and the 17-member eurozone - may well be the only one that matters.

Fiscal union

Mrs Merkel has called for a new EU treaty - with more power in controlling the finances of wayward nations.

Continue reading the main story

"We aren't just talking about a fiscal union," she told German lawmakers. "Rather, we have begun creating one.

"We need budget discipline and an effective crisis management mechanism," she said. "So we need to change the treaties or create new treaties."

The German government wants the new treaty to allow the EU to veto national budgets in the eurozone that breach the so-called "golden rule" regarding deficits.

Mrs Merkel wants to introduce sanctions if budgets end up having larger deficits, and she wants the European Court of Justice to have jurisdiction over disputes.

Pushing to transfer more national authority to Brussels at a time when the entire European project often appears to be on the verge of collapse may seem like a brazen strategy, particularly as there were already rules in place to prevent the current debt crisis from getting to this stage.

The Growth and Stability Pact was introduced when the euro was agreed in 1992. It limits budget deficits to no more than 3% of a country's total economy.

And following the recession in the early 2000s, who was it that quickly violated the pact? Germany and France.

Even Germany's closest ally is wary of some of Mrs Merkel's proposed changes, and the European Parliament President, Jerzy Buzek, warned last Friday that treaty change could be divisive and "dangerous".

That is because a treaty change would have to be approved by all 27 states - and with some requiring referendums to give up sovereignty, it could get messy.

So in a press conference with the French president on Monday, Mrs Merkel said that the treaty change would be for all 27 members - or for the 17 members of the eurozone to sign it, and other nations to do so voluntarily.

And subsequent decisions on issues such as bailouts will be passed by qualified majority, not unanimity as it now.

Whichever is easier for all of you, seemed to be the German message.

Business conditions improve

AUSTRALIAN business conditions nudged higher last month as a cut in interest rates helped shore up the economy against growing concerns about the outlook for Europe, National Australia Bank said today.

The bank's business conditions index rose 1 point to +1 points in November from October and the business confidence index was unchanged at +2 points over the same period. 

"Given that we have seen some slowing in global activity data, especially in Europe, the uptick in conditions in the month is perhaps more favourable than might have been expected," the bank said. 

The Reserve Bank of Australia cut interest rates at the start of last month, and then backed it up with a second cut this month. The central bank has warned the European debt crisis is beginning to be felt in Asia, a region crucial for Australia's exports. 

Financial markets expect the RBA to continue cutting interest rates in early 2012 as eurozone policy makers continue to scratch for answers to the region's debt crisis. 

"The continuing financial crisis in the eurozone is seriously damaging European business confidence and affecting economic activity. As a result, we are now expecting a deeper recession in that region with spill-over effects around the world," National Australia Bank said. 

NAB cut its forecast for world growth to 3.25 per cent for 2012 saying the big emerging market economies like China, India and Brazil are slowing as earlier policy tightening takes effect. 

Still, Australia's economy is a standout, with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development saying recently it will be among the fastest growing developed nations in 2012. 

NAB said the survey results are consistent with Australia growing at or around its historic averages, with improvement in November recorded in forward order, stocks, employment and capacity utilisation. 

Data last week showed the economy grew strongly in the third quarter thanks largely to a mining investment boom. Annualised, the economy grew by 3.9 per cent in the quarter. 

"Australian national accounts data heralded the start of the long-awaited mining investment boom, while consumption growth remains firm," NAB said. 

NAB expects Australia's commodity-rich economy to grow in year average terms by 4.5 per cent in 2012, accelerating from 2.1 per cent in 2011.

Business can't stop Global Warming

The climate summit in Durban, South Africa, does not appear to be making great strides. The United States is dragging its feet, blocking any binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gases.

Along with Washington, businesses are trying to turn the whole Durban process away from urgent emissions cuts and toward an increasingly perplexing and sophisticated array of non-solutions. These include large-scale biofuel plantations, genetically engineered “supercrops,” synthetic biology, unworkable yet lucrative carbon offset schemes and something called geoengineering, whereby scientists would turn the globe into a giant experiment by injecting newfangled materials into the atmosphere to try to counteract global warming.

Such technological quick fixes all assume that global warming can be tackled without changing entrenched patterns of production and consumption in industrialized societies. Even worse, they assume that the multifaceted ecological and societal crises that we face today can be addressed without confrontation, sacrifice or trade-offs. They assume that the free market can solve the climate change crisis when, in fact, it created the crisis.

The suits who are in Durban and elsewhere trying to sell us these technological fixes and free-market fallacies are in the environmental act to make money.

But turning this into a business is simply not right. The Freedom Riders, the 19th-century abolitionists, conscientious objectors against wars past and present, and the crusaders who risked life and limb for women’s suffrage and workers’ rights were not in it for the money. They would have regarded the idea of turning their brave struggles into business opportunities as comically obscene.

The major movements for social change, including the U.S. civil rights movement, well understood that power concedes nothing without a demand, that they could not afford to live in a make-believe “win-win” world in which freedom and progress are attained without a price.

For a way out of the climate crisis, proposals are not enough. We can talk all we want about local sustainable economies, organic city gardening, recycling, solar energy and steady-state post-growth economics, but we need action. We simply cannot continue along the path we’re on. It is literally destroying the planet.

And when it comes to action we should look to the example of activists who have physically obstructed the extraction of oil shale and tar sands and the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. These protesters are politically close relatives of the everyday folks who camped out in the Wisconsin state capitol earlier this year and the anti-Wall Street occupiers who are protesting all over the country right now.

This kind of activism holds out the most promise, as the late historian Howard Zinn taught us.

We need civil disobedience and massive non-collaboration with illegitimate authority if we are to reverse course on global climate change.

To save the environment, the last thing we should do is turn it into a business venture.

Redefining Official Performance with encouraging Business Quotes

If you have a vision for redefining performance at the workplace withencouraging business quotes, we have all them right here at Blogs N Reviews. These inspiring quotations for business leaders and executives will surely give you more than just a reason to get and stay inspired.

I have heard it said that the first ingredient of success — the earliest spark in the dreaming youth — if this; dream a great dream. – John A. Appleman

Keep away from small people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. – Mark Twain

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution. – Samuel Johnson

The passion of self-aggrandizement is persistent but plastic; it will never disappear from a vigorous mind, but may become morally higher by attaching itself to a larger conception of what constitutes the self. – Charles Horton Cooley

Very few people are ambitious in the sense of having a specific image of what they want to achieve. Most people’s sights are only toward the next run, the next increment of money. – Judith M. Bardwick

Commerce is so far from being beneficial to arts, or to empire, that it is destructive of both, as all their history shows, for the above reason of individual merit being its great hatred. Empires flourish till they become commercial, and then they are scattered abroad to the four winds. – William Blake

You don’t hear things that are bad about your company unless you ask. It is easy to hear good tidings, but you have to scratch to get the bad news. – Thomas J. Watson

Successful-Business Promotion Quotes

When it comes to being successful in business endeavors, there is nothing more impressive than business promotion quotes.

There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time! – Coco Chanel

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else. – Sam Walton

Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed. – Peter Drucker

To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less. – Andre Malraux

The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such. All leaders whose fitness is questioned are clearly lacking in force. – Andre Maurois

The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows. – Aristotle Onassis

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell. – Confucius

The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them. – Benjamin Jowett

To think that the new economy is over is like somebody in London in 1830 saying the entire industrial revolution is over because some textile manufacturers in Manchester went broke. – Alvin Toffler

Try, try, try, and keep on trying is the rule that must be followed to become an expert in anything. – W. Clement Stone

We don’t have a monopoly. We have market share. There’s a difference. – Steve Ballmer

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Investments through Stock Exchanges

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• The ceiling for overall investment for FIIs is 24 per cent of the paid up capital of the Indian company and 10 per cent for NRIs/PIOs. The limit is 20 per cent of the paid up capital in the case of public sector banks.
• The ceiling of 24 per cent for FII investment can be raised up to sectoral cap/statutory ceiling, subject to the approval of the board and the general body of the company passing a special resolution to that effect. And the ceiling of 10 per cent for NRIs/PIOs can be raised to 24 per cent subject to the approval of the general body of the company passing a resolution to that effect.
• The ceiling for FIIs is independent of the ceiling of 10 per cent/24 per cent for NRIs/PIOs.
• The equity shares and convertible debentures of the companies within the prescribed ceilings are available for purchase under PIS subject to:
• - the total purchase of all NRIs/PIOs both, on repatriation and non-repatriation basis, being within an overall ceiling limit of (a) 24 per cent of the company's total paid up equity capital and (b) 24 per cent of the total paid up value of each series of convertible debenture; and
• - the investment made on repatriation basis by any single NRI/PIO in the equity shares and convertible debentures not exceeding five per cent of the paid up equity capital of the company or five per cent of the total paid up value of each series of convertible debentures issued by the company.

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Asset Management Companies / Merchant Banking

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Obama visiting Kansas to push payroll

By Charles Dharapak, AP

WASHINGTON – President Obama will attempt to summon his inner Teddy Roosevelt when he heads deep into Republican country Tuesday to make his case for an expansion and extension of the payroll tax holiday that is due to expire at the end of the year.

Obama heads to Osawatomie — a northeast Kansas hamlet of 4,600 where Roosevelt made his New Nationalism speech in 1910 — and will argue that America faces a make-or-break moment for the middle class.

Just as Roosevelt called for the United States to become a country that offered a "square deal," Obama intends to use his Osawatomie speech to call for a "fair shake" for middle-class families and those trying to get into the middle class, White House press secretary Jay Carney said.

STORY: 8 steps to the presidential election: What to watch for

Obama has made extending the payroll tax holiday — which lowered the payroll tax rate from 6.2% to 4.2% in 2011 — a top priority and has sought to paint the GOP as less concerned about middle-class Americans. Last week, Senate Republicans blocked an Obama-backed plan that proposed lowering the payroll tax rate to 3.1% for 160 million Americans through a 3.25% surtax on 350,000 others that earn more than $1 million.

"How can you fight tooth-and-nail to protect high-end tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, and yet barely lift a finger to prevent taxes going up for 160 million Americans who really need the help?" Obama said Monday.

The visit to Kansas — a state that hasn't voted for a Democrat in a presidential race in 1964 — is Obama's first as president and comes as Republicans mount criticism that he is spending too much time in battleground states.

Obama warns that failing to extend the payroll tax holiday could hurt the economy and in recent days has spoken of an unease that federal policy is skewing in favor of the wealthy — a theme that Roosevelt hammered at in his Osawatomie speech.

In many ways, Roosevelt's speech previewed his 1912 election challenge to William Howard Taft, first in the Republication nomination contest and later as a third-party candidate. Roosevelt, then an ex-president, visited Osawatomie at a time he was becoming increasingly critical of his successor and fellow Republican.

Osawatomie leans Republican, but that hasn't dampened excitement about Obama's visit. Residents lined up for hours to grab 500 tickets that were made available to the public. The small town also was aflutter with speculation as dozens of White House officials tried to stealthily — but unsuccessfully — scout out Osawatomie last week to prepare for Obama's visit, said Mayor Philip Dudley.

And while many in the audience are unlikely to vote for Obama, Dudley said that they're eager to hear his pitch for extending the payroll tax holiday.

"I know people here that are living paycheck to paycheck, working two or three jobs and every little bit helps," Dudley said. "We do understand that we do need to get the federal deficit under control — nobody disagrees with that statement — but the payroll tax ultimately started out as our money."

But Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., said he was doubtful that the White House's push for an extension of the payroll tax holiday resonates with Kansans, who have weathered the tough economy better than much of the country. The state's unemployment rate sits at 6.7% — well below the 8.6% national unemployment rate.

Huelskamp also contends that his constituents are more concerned about eliminating federal environmental regulations and businesses are looking for long-term certainty on tax rates.

"I think if he took the opportunity to come and listen to people instead of talking at them, the president would get an earful about regulations that are killing our economy," Huelskamp said. "He wouldn't get people saying we need a payroll tax holiday that's going to give us an extra $20 per week."