The "sight" of the UK Telegraph misusing "site" ought to be deeply embarrassing to the home of the English language, but won't be

Here in "America's newest warship breaks down at sea after 20 days".

Greek PM Alexis Tsipras has resigned today

Blow by blow coverage is provided in the UK by the Telegraph here and the Guardian here.

The next two largest political parties have a chance to try to form a government, but it is thought likely that they'll be unsuccessful and that snap elections will occur in a month.

Tsipras remains very popular, but will have to shed Syriza's Left Platform rebels to consolidate power in the new election with new blood, if he can get that far.

Greek PM Alexis Tsipras proves once again he's a stand up guy, says he directed Yanis Varoufakis to develop Plan B

The Telegraph reports here:

'This morning, Alexis Tsipras has come out in defence of Yanis Varoufakis. The PM has spoken about the plans the former finance minster was in charge of, to look into developing a parallel payments system, in public for the first time. He has confirmed he had full knowledge of the blueprint, and ordered Mr Varoufakis to take charge. But he denies that they amounted to a full blown "Grexit" plan.'

Yanis Varoufakis, the former Finance Minister, previously in parliament had stood up for Tsipras by reluctantly and surprisingly voting Yes to proceed with the EuroGroup Summit plan Tsipras had agreed to in Brussels.

Perhaps now parliament will abandon, as it should, any effort to prosecute Varoufakis who like every other member enjoys immunity.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is rightly exasperated by the oligarchy's attempt to criminalize Yanis Varoufakis

Here:

'It has come to this. The first finance minister of a eurozone country to draw up contingency plans for a possible euro exit is under investigation for treason.

'Greece's chief prosecutor is examining criminal charges against a five-man "working group" in the country's finance ministry for the sin of designing a "Plan B", a parallel system of euro liquidity and bank payments that could - in extremis - lead to a return of the drachma.

'It is hard to see how a monetary union held together by judicial power, coercion and fear in this way can have a future in any of Europe's ancient nation states.

'The criminalisation of any Grexit debate shuts off the option of an orderly return to the drachma, even though there is a high probability - some say a near certainty - that the latest EMU loan package for Greece will prove unworkable and precipitate the country's exit from the single currency within a year. As a matter of practical statecraft, this is sheer madness.'

Someone gets to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: On the weekend Schauble was a devil, but now he's a misunderstood genius!

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard erupted on Twitter on the weekend when Schauble leaked the Grexit memo in Brussels:

Now Schauble is a misunderstood genius who had it right all along:

'Wolfgang Schauble is one of the very few figures who has behaved honourably in this latest chapter. ... [H]e is entirely right to argue that a velvet divorce and an orderly exit from the euro for five years would be a “better way” for Greece, as he did on Germany radio this morning. ... Mr Schauble has been pushing for Grexit since 2012, and probably earlier. He genuinely thinks it would better for all concerned. When he floated his plan, he meant it. ... Even if [Merkel] was irritated by the Schauble paper – and her skirmishes with the irascible finance minister are legendary – she appears to have latched on to it as a useful negotiating ploy. The trick worked. It terrified Mr Tsipras into submission. ... Mr Schauble’s original and honourable intentions have been entirely misunderstood. The world’s verdict is that Germany's benign and enlightened statecraft in Europe over the past 60 years has given way to Bild Zeitung reflexes, the hegemony of crude populism. One can only feel sympathy for German diplomats who must clean up the mess and explain how this tangle of conflicting agendas spun escaped control.'

Euro Group creditors made a bundle off Greece's problems in 2014: 13 billion EUR

Moody's on Greece indicated today that the debt/GDP burden was already 177% before Syriza was even elected in 2015, but one man's debt burden is another man's opportunity.

Seen here:

'We assess Greece’s Fiscal Strength as `low’, because of the country’s high debt burden, which stood at around 177% of GDP at the end of 2014, one of the highest debt burdens in the universe of Moody’s-rated countries. Moreover, the potential to meaningfully improve the debt trend over the next 3-5 years is highly uncertain given that the large-scale reforms that could spur growth are currently hampered by ongoing political uncertainty.'

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Eurostat shows Greek GDP in current euros was just shy of 179.1 billion in 2014, down 26% from the 2008 peak. Greece is in a long, severe depression. Central government debt rose to 324 billion EUR at the end of 2014 and actually dropped to 313 billion EUR in the first quarter of 2015. Syriza was elected to power on January 25, 2015.

Those awful conditions developed under years of austerity government, after years of profligacy,  which Syriza promised to end. Now that Syriza has been forced to double down on austerity, expect conditions in Greece to worsen dramatically without debt forgiveness or a generational period of grace from repayment obligations. 

Little discussed in that regard, however, is the fact that in 2014 Greece is said to have paid an interest rate on its debts of 4% nominal and 2.6% effective.  This is happening in a world where the ECB has just decided to keep the headline lending rate at the record low level of 0.05%.

Whatever else may be said, Euro Group creditors by comparison are making a killing off Greece's predicament: almost 13 billion EUR in debt service revenues in 2014 alone.

If Europe is serious about keeping Greece in the Group, maybe it could start by stopping the profiteering.

Greece left in a permanent debt trap under neo-colonial rule after historic weekend showdown in Brussels

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, here:

The crushed Syriza leader [Alexis Tsipras] must sell a settlement that leaves Greece in a permanent debt trap, under neo-colonial control, and so economically fragile that it is almost guaranteed to crash into a fresh crisis in the next global downturn or European recession.

Germany blinks: Greeks win time, funding and an end to previous austerity agreements

Reported here:

Mr Tsipras added the extension would finally put an end to the "asphyxiation" Greece has suffered since 2012.

"Yesterday's agreement with the Eurogroup cancels the commitments of the previous government for cuts to wages and pensions, for firings in the public sector, for VAT rises on food, medicine," added the prime minister.

"We averted plans by blind conservative powers, within and outside the country, to asphyxiate Greece on February 28," he said.

Looming global financial catastrophe: Anglo-Saxon pioneers of QE have yet to pay its price

William White, former chief economist to the Bank for International Settlements, quoted here:

Those who argue that the US and the UK are growing faster than Europe because they carried out QE early are confusing "correlation with causality". The Anglo-Saxon pioneers have yet to pay the price. "It ain't over until the fat lady sings. There are serious side-effects building up and we don't know what will happen when they try to reverse what they have done."

The UK's Jeremy Warner joins the cognoscenti: high asset prices are going bye-bye

Here:

"It is as if all the inflation that used to go into consumer prices has been diverted into financial assets and real estate instead. ... Static or falling prices, on the other hand, are always extremely bad for corporate profits in the long term. ... In a deflationary environment, equities and property will inevitably perform badly: only fixed-interest sovereign bonds, the least risky form of investment, do well."

On GDP Mish sounds just like Ambrose Evans-Pritchard five years ago

Here is Mish in 2015:

"Effectively we have borrowed current growth from the future. Looking ahead, growth surprises will be predominantly on the downside for years to come."

Here is Ambrose in 2010:

"Debt draws forward prosperity, which leads to powerful overhang effects that are not properly incorporated into Fed models. That is the key reason why Ben Bernanke’s Fed was caught flat-footed when the crisis hit, and kept misjudging it until the events started to spin out of control."

The global oil war just got even more interesting: Dept. of Commerce relaxes export ban

With a tip o' the hat to Andrew Critchlow at the UK Telegraph, Reuters reported just a couple of hours ago that the US Dept. of Commerce has announced relaxation of some parts of the 1974 US oil export ban, here:

(Reuters) - The Obama administration has opened a new front in the global battle for oil market share, effectively clearing the way for the shipment of as much as a million barrels per day of ultra-light U.S. crude to the rest of the world.

The Department of Commerce on Tuesday ended a year-long silence on a contentious, four-decade ban on oil exports, saying it had begun approving a backlog of requests to sell processed light oil abroad. It also issued a long-awaited document outlining exactly what kinds of oil other would-be exporters can ship. ...

... the impending swell of U.S. petroleum into global markets may intensify what many analysts say is a pivotal oil market war, with Saudi Arabia and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) unwilling to yield ground. Now they will face even greater competition beyond U.S. shores.

IEA revises down 2015 oil demand growth by 20%, a third of British oilers in big trouble, mostly smaller

Andrew Critchlow reported Dec. 12th here:

The International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday that world demand for oil will grow by 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) next year, a downward revision of 230,000 bpd from its previous estimate.

The Paris-based watchdog now expects world demand to reach 93.3m bpd in 2015. The agency said: "A strong dollar and the lifting of subsidies have so far limited supportive price effects on demand."

And here on the 29th:

A third of Britain’s listed oil and gas companies are in danger of running out of working capital and even going bankrupt amid a slump in the value of crude, according to new research.

Financial risk management group Company Watch believes that 70pc of the UK’s publicly listed oil exploration and production companies are now unprofitable, racking up significant losses in the region of £1.8bn.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says Britain's George Osborne is full of fiscal baloney

George Osborne is in today's Wall Street Journal here, bragging about Britain's fiscal discipline, among other things:

"In the U.K., faced four years ago with a record budget deficit of over 10%, we set out a clear deficit-reduction plan and steadily implemented it. The challenging spending totals I set out for the British government have been consistently achieved year after year."

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has heard it all before, and says baloney, here:

On the fiscal front, Britain has a deficit of 5pc of GDP a full five years into the economic recovery, when growth is running at 3pc and should be generating a windfall of tax revenue. This is prima facie evidence of a chronic reliance on state borrowing to perpetuate a consumption model.

The deficit is 4.4pc in France, 1.5pc in Italy and 0.2pc in Germany. The US deficit - once similar to ours - has dropped to 2.8pc of GDP on a quarterly basis. Britain sticks out like a sore thumb. ... 

For all the superficial likeness, the Anglo-Saxon growth stories in Britain and America have nothing in common. The US has cut its current account deficit from 6pc to 1.9pc of GDP. It is on track to achieve energy independence by 2018, igniting a revival of its chemical, plastics, glass and steel industries along the way. Luck has played its part but one recovery is durable, the other is literally on borrowed time.

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Methinks Ambrose overestimates US GDP in his analysis to arrive at his rosy 2.8% deficit, and is too sanguine about the future of Republican spending restraint now that Cromnibus has passed, but you get the idea . . . Politicians spinning tales.

Net worth of $3,650 puts you in the top half globally

So quit complaining.

Story here.

Dallas Ebola vomit wasn't cleaned off the sidewalk for four days, and then improperly

Meanwhile, things Duncan contaminated filled 140 barrels.

The UK Telegraph, here:

Q: Was the ambulance trip to hospital handled properly?

A: On Sept 28 [Sunday] the daughter of his girlfriend brought Duncan tea in bed and found him shivering and sick. An ambulance was called. When it arrived neighbours witnessed him vomiting on the ground outside the apartment as he was placed in the emergency vehicle. No extra precautions were taken for the ambulance ride despite the fact he was Liberian and showing possible symptoms of Ebola. The ambulance was used for another 48 hours before being taken out of service. After his eventual diagnosis the three ambulance workers were told to stay home until they get the all clear. Meanwhile, it took until Thursday for workmen ... using high-pressure water jets and bleach to clean the area outside the apartment where he had been sick.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard oddly unaware high CO2 coincides with 17yr+ pause in global warming

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, here:

[Shale] has whittled down the US current account deficit, now just 2pc of GDP [approximately $340 billion?]. Cheap gas costs - a third of EU prices and a quarter of Asian prices - has brought US industry back from near death, perhaps for long enough to give America another two decades of superpower ascendancy. But making money out of shale is another matter.

Even if the fossil companies navigate the next global downturn more or less intact, they are in the untenable position of booking vast assets that can never be burned without violating global accords on climate change.

The IEA says that two-thirds of their reserves become fictional if there is a binding deal limit to CO2 levels to 450 particles per million (ppm), the maximum deemed necessary to stop the planet rising more than two degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels. It crossed 400 ppm threshold this spring, the highest in more than 800,000 years.

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Ambrose's problem is that he has insufficient skepticism: There is no binding deal, and we couldn't stop developing nations from spewing even if we wanted to. Ambrose has become a co-dependent in the climate scare and is trafficking in last year's news:

If CO2 was at the same level as of 800,000 years ago, why are we cooler by 5-10 degrees and sea levels lower by 75-120 feet? This would indicate there’s no CO2/temp/sea level relationship.

Indeed, as the picture has unfolded in the last year, we are well past the 17 year milestone for no temperature anomaly. All that extra CO2 is doing nothing, except maybe producing too much vegetation.

So I bought a lawn tractor to mow it all down.

Attention Mish: Dump Google Translate and learn a second language already

From the story here:

The participants were given an intelligence test in 1947 at the age of 11 and were retested in their early 70s, between 2008 and 2010. Of the participants, 262 said they were able to communicate in at least one language other than English. Of those, 195 learned the second language before the age of 18, while 65 learned the language after this age.

Researchers found that those who spoke two or more languages had significantly better cognitive abilities in later life, compared to what would be predicted from their performance in the tests at age 11.

24 from France's National Front elected to European parliament, 24 from England's UKIP

In each case, nationalist parties won a clear plurality of seats from their countries' respective delegations, which are only 74 and 73 strong to begin with, respectively. It is a strong vote of displeasure from the citizens of France and the UK in sending nearly a third of their parliamentarians from parties of the right to raise hell over the Euro.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard thinks this means it's curtains for the EU, here:

The EU authorities are now in a near hopeless situation. The logic of EMU is a further erosion of nation states. The "Two Pack", "Six Pack" and "Fiscal Compact" are all coming into force, and national regulators are losing control over their banking systems. The euro will inevitably lurch from crisis to crisis without some form of fiscal union and debt pooling. Yet voters have just let forth a primordial scream against any further transfers of power.

After the holocaust of Jews, a holocaust of Germans at the hands of the victors

Remembered in After the Reich, reviewed here:

[Giles MacDonogh's] best estimate is that some three million Germans died unnecessarily after the official end of hostilities. A million soldiers vanished before they could creep back to the holes that had been their homes. The majority of them died in Soviet captivity (of the 90,000 who surrendered at Stalingrad, only 5,000 eventually came home) but, shamingly, many thousands perished as prisoners of the Anglo-Americans. Herded into cages along the Rhine, with no shelter and very little food, they dropped like flies. Others, more fortunate, toiled as slave labour in a score of Allied countries, often for years. Incredibly, some Germans were still being held in Russia as late as 1979.

The two million German civilians who died were largely the old, women and children: victims of disease, cold, hunger, suicide - and mass murder.

Apart from the well-known repeated rape of virtually every girl and woman unlucky enough to be in the Soviet occupation zones, perhaps the most shocking outrage recorded by MacDonogh - for the first time in English - is the slaughter of a quarter of a million Sudeten Germans by their vengeful Czech compatriots. The survivors of this ethnic cleansing, naked and shivering, were pitched across the border, never to return to their homes. Similar scenes were seen across Poland, Silesia and East Prussia as age-old German communities were brutally expunged.