TheEconomicCollapse: "Most Americans still do not understand just how bad the economic horror we are facing really is. Today, millions of Americans are living as paupers in the land that their foreathers built even as America's infrastructure is literally being sold out from under their feet by corrupt politicians. The 'official' unemployment rate in the United States has been at nine and a half percent or above for 14 consecutive months, and today it takes the average unemployed American about 35 weeks to find a job. However, the 'official' unemployment rate is misleading, because it does not include workers that have quit looking for work or that have had their hours cut back to part-time.
According to 60 Minutes, when you add those 'discouraged workers' and 'underemployed workers' into the equation the actual rate is about 17 percent, and in the state of California the actual rate is about 22 percent. Meanwhile, foreign nations are using sovereign wealth funds to buy up staggering amounts of U.S. infrastructure. America is quite literally for sale in 2010. All across the United States, highways, ports, toll roads and even parking meters are being gobbled up by foreign powers. We have shipped massive amounts of wealth and jobs to other nations, and now those very same countries are turning around and buying huge amounts of U.S. infrastructure with the gigantic piles of dollars that they have accumulated."
Telegraph: "Half a million public sector workers are to lose their jobs as a result of the comprehensive review of government spending, official documents have disclosed."
VK: "Britse pond zakt tot laagste stand in maanden."
BBC: "An agency nurse working for the NHS was filmed switching off her patient's life support machine by mistake."
Guardian: "I have to admit, though, that it was perplexing to watch the French elect Nicolas Sarkozy president in 2007, a man who campaigned on the idea that France had to make its economy more 'efficient', like America's. In reality, he couldn't have picked a worse time to peddle this mumbo-jumbo. The housing bubble was already bursting in the United States and would soon cause not only our own Great Recession, but also drag most of the world economy into the swamp with it. So much for that particular model of economic dynamism.
If the French want to keep the retirement age as is, there are plenty of ways to finance future pension costs without necessarily raising the retirement age. One of them, which has support among the French left (and which Sarkozy claims to support at the international level), would be a tax on financial transactions. Such a 'speculation tax' could raise billions of dollars of revenue – as it currently does in the UK – while simultaneously discouraging speculative trading in financial assets and derivatives. The French unions and protesters are demanding that the government considers some of these more progressive alternatives.
The French are, in effect, fighting for the future of Europe – and it is a good example for others. We can only hope that, here in the United States, we will be able to beat back any proposed cuts to our much less generous social security system, with attacks on benefits looming on the horizon."
En Rutte gaat met hetzelfde procédé Nederland 'sterker' maken.