Britain boycotts IMF eurozone rescue scheme

European countries have agreed to provide 150bn euros (£125bn; $194bn) to the International Monetary Fund.

The money could be used to help countries in the eurozone struggling to pay their debts.

Mario Draghi, the head of the ECB, says
"I have no doubts whatsoever" about the strength of the euro

Eurozone countries including Germany, Italy and Spain as well as several outside the eurozone offered support.
But Britain's decision not to take part in a scheme to support the eurozone meant EU finance ministers failed to reach their target sum of 200bn euro.
The British government wants an increase in IMF resources to be part of a broader process involving all G20 nations.
"The UK has always been willing to consider further resources for the IMF, but for its global role and as part of a global agreement," the office of UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said in a statement.
'Lack of solidarity'
BBC Europe correspondent Chris Morris says Britain is insisting that the IMF's role is to support countries not currencies.
But, he adds, some will see this as another example of a lack of solidarity from London, at a time when the eurozone is struggling to emerge from months of economic crisis.
The largest contributers to the fund were Germany and Spain.
Eurozone nations which have already had to accept international bailouts - such as Greece and Ireland - will not take part in the new scheme.
But contributions to the IMF fund have also been pledged by several countries outside the eurozone, including Denmark, Poland, Sweden and the Czech Republic.
News of the agreement came as the European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said he had no doubts that the euro would survive.
But the bank also warned that risks to the eurozone's stability had increased and that, in the worst-case scenario, there could be a return to a global recession.
In its twice-yearly Financial Stability Report it said that the risk of two large banks defaulting within the next year had risen to the highest level in four years.
The ECB also warned that some eurozone banks had become addicted to central-bank funds, and could face "significant challenges".

Source: BBC

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Posted in: Europea,Society

French banker says UK should be downgraded first

The chairman of the French central bank, Christian Noyer, has said ratings agencies should downgrade the UK before France because its economy is weaker.

Christian Noyer heads France's central bank

US agency Standard and Poor's recently warned France its rating could suffer over the eurozone crisis and downturn.
"The downgrade does not appear to me to be justified when considering economic fundamentals," Mr Noyer said.
The British Government responded by saying the UK had a credible plan for dealing with its deficit.
Speaking to French regional newspaper Le Telegramme, Mr Noyer said any downgrade should start with Britain "which has more deficits, as much debt, more inflation, less growth than us and where credit is slumping".
Britain was not identified as a credit risk by Standard and Poor's in its report earlier this month.
The spokesman for UK Prime Minister David Cameron said: "Credit ratings are a matter for credit rating agencies but we've put in place a credible deficit reduction plan and you can see that credibility in the UK's bond yields."
There is a sense of frustration across the eurozone that last week's summit in Brussels seems to have done little to calm the financial markets, the BBC's Chris Morris reports.

Analysis

Chris Morris BBC News, Brussels

There is a sense that the markets are waiting for a decision from the ratings agencies on whether France will lose its cherished AAA credit rating. French ministers have already said it would be regrettable, but not disastrous.
For a central banker, these are rather extraordinary comments, but Mr Noyer also said the agencies had become incomprehensible and irrational.
It is another sign of the sense of frustration across the eurozone that last week's summit seems to have done little to calm the financial markets. Already there are political disputes brewing about the proposed new treaty which all EU member states except Britain have agreed to consider.
Part of the problem is that there is no draft treaty text yet - it is due to emerge early next week. After that, intensive consultations will begin, with the aim of reaching a political agreement on the details of the treaty at yet another EU summit in late January or early February.

Relations have been strained between France and Britain, which vetoed changes to the Lisbon Treaty that would have allowed for closer economic integration.

Hungary and the Czech Republic raised concerns on Thursday about the plans for a closer fiscal union, saying they should apply only to eurozone states.
Loss of the top credit grade would have serious economic implications for France, increasing the interest rate it paid for new state borrowing.
Mr Noyer accused ratings agencies of putting at risk "the positive feeling that existed on the markets the day after the Brussels summit".
In the French parliament, Finance Minister Francois Baroin poked fun at Britain, saying the fiscal pact had been backed by every country in Europe, "with the singular, now solitary, exception of Great Britain, which history will remember as marginalised".
"Great Britain is in a very difficult economic situation, a deficit close to the level of Greece, debt equivalent to our own, much higher inflation prospects and growth forecasts well under the eurozone average," he said.
"It's an audacious choice the British government has made."

source: BBC

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Posted in: Business,Europea,Experimental Society

Medvedev Orders Probe Of Russian Election Fraud Allegations

Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev attends a news conference at Prague Castle, December 8, 2011.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Sunday ordered an investigation into the allegations of electoral fraud during last week's parliamentary vote.

The announcement came a day after tens of thousands of people rallied in Moscow and other cities to demand the December 4 polls won by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's ruling United Russia party be annulled and rerun.

In a post on the social media site Facebook, Mr. Medvedev said that "although he does not agree with any slogans or speeches made at the rallies, he has given instructions to check all information from polling station regarding compliance with the election laws."

Within minutes of his statement, Mr. Medvedev had received over 1,000 comments on his Facebook site, most of them angry and some disrespectful.  "Shame!" and "We do not believe you!" were the most common.

Neither the president nor Putin has appeared in public in recent days, as protest organizers sought to harness opposition to the outcome of the polls.  Critics accuse Mr. Putin's ruling United Russia party of complicity in widespread vote rigging and other irregularities.

Saturday's rallies in Moscow, St. Petersburg and the Far Eastern cities of Khabarovsk and Vladivostok were the largest to hit Russia since the tumultuous 1990s and were largely peaceful.  However, protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg last week triggered a massive police presence and the arrests of hundreds of demonstrators.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe on Sunday urged Russia's leaders "to hold a dialogue, to avoid violence, and to let the opposition demonstrate and learn the lessons for the organization of the next presidential elections."

Juppe also criticized Putin's plan to return to the presidency by swapping places with Mr. Medvedev.  He said people do not like it very much when one plays with the democratic process.  "To say that I am prime minister and you can have the presidency, and vice-versa, that is something that ends up angering people," Juppe added.

Last month, Mr. Putin formally accepted his party's nomination to return to the presidency -- a post that analysts have said he is certain to win.  He announced his intentions in September, confirming a deal under which he would appoint President Medvedev as his prime minister.

The planned job swap has angered many in Russia, who said it would strengthen authoritarian rule and clear the way for Mr. Putin to become Russia's longest-serving leader since communist times.

If he regains the presidency, the 59-year-old Mr. Putin could serve two more 6-year terms and remain in power until 2024.  He was first elected president in 2000.
Source: VOA

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Posted in: Europea

Pro-Democracy Protests Put Putin, Russia at Turning Point

Supporters of Russian communist party hold a rally to protest against violations at the parliamentary elections in Russia's Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, December 9, 2011.

Is the Arab Spring moving North to become the Russian Winter? With democracy demonstrations to take place across Russia on Saturday, the world’s largest nation may be at a crossroads.

From his prison cell near the Arctic Circle, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed Russian tycoon, captured the core of Russia’s political impasse when he predicted a few weeks ago that the key question would not be who will win Russia’s elections, but how much will the fraud undermine the legitimacy of Vladimir Putin’s government?

On Saturday, barely one week after Russia’s parliamentary elections, we may see the answer.

Readying for major protest

A Moscow protest demonstration permitted for 300 people has drawn attendance pledges from 50,000 people. Moscow is bracing for the largest democracy demonstration of the Putin decade.

Beyond the capital, protests are to take place in 88 Russian and 43 foreign cities. From Kaliningrad on the Baltic to Vladivostok on the Pacific, Russians seem to be shaking off an apathy that Putin's opponents say has allowed him to rule Russia largely unchallenged since 2000.

Where is all this headed?

Boris Makarenko, chairman of the Center for Political Technologies, an independent think tank in Moscow, does not believe the Russian street will dethrone the Czar.

“I don’t think it is going towards an Orange Revolution like in Ukraine, Georgia or Yugoslavia,” said Makarenko.

Putin eroding popularity

But Russia has changed. The mystique of Putin’s invincibility has shown some cracks.

The first shock came when a crowd at a martial arts fight booed Putin, a judo expert. The Kremlin later said the crowd was really booing a losing contestant, an American. Then the Kremlin said the beer drinkers in the crowd were booing because presidential security did not let them use the bathrooms.

Kremlin watchers have noted, though, that Putin has not appeared in public since, skipping two anti-drug rallies where he had been billed as a speaker.

In last Sunday’s elections, the vote for the ruling United Russia Party officially dropped to half of the ballots cast. But opposition politicians and many election observers say that, without fraud, only one quarter of the voters in Moscow and St. Petersburg cast ballots for the ruling party. Historically, it is hard to rule Russia without these two cities.

Questions surround elections

Keeping passions on a boil, Russia’s Internet is flooded with videos, photos and reports alleging election fraud. Mikhail Prokhorov, Russia’s second richest man, wrote on his blog: “The majority of our people think the elections were unfair.”

On Tuesday night, while police were arresting more than 500 anti-Putin protesters in central Moscow, Putin was a few blocks away, studying paintings at a show of Caravaggio, the 17th century Italian painter.

In a short three months, Putin faces voters as a candidate for president and has to make choices about his strategy.

He can crack down, following the path of neighboring Belarus. He can open up, offering reforms. Or he can spread government money around, drawing on Russia’s massive foreign currency reserves - about half a trillion dollars.

Putin's path ahead

Vladimir Tikhomirov, an analyst with Otkritie investment house, believes Putin will do a little bit of everything, aiming to keep power.

“I wouldn’t rule out the traditional Russian way of trying to muddle through, using the combinations of reforms and police state,” said Tikhomirov.

The Kremlin has full control of the police and the television stations. Ten days from now, Russians will shift focus to the Christmas-New Year’s season, a holiday period that stretches through to mid-January.

One month ago, Anatol Lieven, a professor at the War Studies Department in King’s College London, joined a group dinner with Prime Minister Putin. He calls Putin a master politician and predicts he will regain his footing.

“It’s just the beginning of course. I would not expect this to prevent Putin’s re-election, let alone to produce a revolution that would bring down the regime,’’ said Lieven.

On Tuesday, Putin spoke to ruling party leaders who are irritated that the opposition calls their party “the party of thieves and swindlers.” Putin recalled that in the Soviet days, people called the authorities “thieves and bribe takers.”

With a six-year presidential term at stake in March, analyst Makarenko said Putin has to offer Russians a vision for the future.

“The catch is that the Russian people lost its optimism during the crisis - not the savings, not the social status. People want their optimism back - and the ruling party did not care to help them in that. Mr. Putin has his chance. He has his agenda to announce,” said Makarenko.

But on Thursday, Putin took a page out of an old Soviet playbook, charging that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent out a “signal” that activated Russia’s street protests.

This week, police in Moscow and St. Petersburg arrested 1,600 protesters. Referring to protests that have been largely invisible to TV watchers here, Putin reminded Russians that they want stability,

Evoking images of chaos, he reminded Russians of the street revolutions that took place in two former Soviet republics, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.

But Professor Lieven said that Russians do not want to sacrifice all democratic freedoms in the name of stability.

“Even conservative Russians, or pro-Putin Russians, really don’t want to see  themselves as a version of Uzbekistan. The appearance of some degree of democracy is really rather psychologically important to them,’’ said Lieven.

Saturday’s demonstrations may serve as sign pointers - indicating which way Russia will go in the New Year.

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Posted in: Europea,Politics,violence