Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos announced, on September 11, that a new property tax will be in place over the next two years.
The new property tax is supposed to make up for 2.6 billion dollars in lost tax revenues. Funny how politicians think that the answer to people not being able to pay taxes, because their incomes are down, is to increase or create new taxes!
To try and placate the Greek masses, the government said politicians will give up one month of pay, big whoop!
September 11, VolksWagen claims Suzuki violated its contract by agreeing to purchase diesel engines from another car maker.
The two companies joined-up in December 2009, but their alliance stalled in July 2011 when Suzuki said VW does not see their partnership as equal.
VW says it will give Suzuki several weeks to return to buying diesel engines from Germany.
“Outside Hong Kong and Shanghai, Australia is the most expensive real estate market in the world compared to income.”-Harry S. Dent Jr, economist
The housing market bubble is finally bursting in Australia, it’s being called an “economic tsunami” in Australian media.
One of the biggest Australian banks, Commonwealth Bank, has dropped its interest rates to try and get people to buy homes.
Also, most of the major home finance banks in Australia are offering refinancing loans to help keep people form defaulting on their home loans. It’s very much like whats been going on here in the United States.
Home prices in the state of South Australia (SA) have been slashed by thousands of Australian dollars. One woman cut her asking price by $60,000: “It’s been on the market for nine months now and the way the economy is at the moment it wasn’t even getting a look-in at open. My partner and I came to the conclusion we needed to drop the price.”-Jan Grainger, Fullarton
This weekend, U.S. economist Harry S. Dent Jr stated that the housing bubble in Australia was about to burst, as well as in China and Japan. He also indicated that the housing correction in the U.S. isn’t over: “People in places like Sydney or Tokyo or Miami say, ‘Hey, real estate can never go down here, we’re a great place, everyone wants to move here, there’s not much land for development’, and what I say is that is exactly the kind of place that bubbles.”
Dent said Australia’s house prices need to correct to 1990s levels.
In the Australian state of Victoria (VIC) real estate agents are actually dropping clients who refuse to drop their prices: “An agent only gets paid when they sell a property so if they are investing a lot of time into something they know is not going to sell, then there is no point in wasting time on it.”-Catherine Cashmore, real estate agent
In New South Wales (NSW) the state government announced that a new tax, on existing home sales to first time home buyers, would go into effect after January 1. That is causing sales to hit 60% rate, due to people trying to beat the new tax (stamp duty).
The problem is that after January 1 you can expect home sales in NSW to hit the floor: “The stamp duty will be a hit of $15,000 – that’s a lot of money for anyone these days. People who haven’t bought or can’t buy by this time have no choice to go back on the rental market. People that don’t buy before January will see rent increase.”-Joel Hollis, real estate agent
Hundreds of Druze residents, in the Israeli occupied Golan Heights, were waiting for United Nations buses to take them to Syria, early on September 11.
The buses never showed up, and the Druze were told Israel denied their annual pilgrimage, because of security concerns. Now hundreds of Druze are protesting in the city Kuneitra.
The Druze religion is influenced by Shi’a Islam, Gnostic Christianity and Jewish beliefs. It was founded by an Iranian mystic in 1017. The majority of Druze are in Syria (including the Israeli occupied Golan Heights) and Lebanon (which was part of Syria).
“Each year, 9/11 reminds the Afghans of an event in which they had no role whatsoever. American colonialism has shed the blood of tens of thousands of miserable and innocent Afghans.”-Afghan insurgent statement
September 11, at least three U.S. troops have been wounded in attacks in western Afghanistan.
This follows a September 10 truck bomb attack against the U.S. Combat Outpost Sayed Abad, in the eastern province of Wardak. NATO reports that 77 U.S. troops were wounded, two Afghans killed and 25 Afghans wounded.
U.S. Army sources have reported that 50 troops, plus civilians, were wounded in the Saturday truck bomb attack: “It happened at 5:15 pm on Saturday. It detonated near the entry point at a combat outpost, resulting in 89 wounded in action and a 20-foot (six-meter) hole in the wall.”-David Eastburn, Major U.S. Army
Wardak is where a U.S. Chinook helicopter was shot down recently, killing all 30 U.S. forces and eight Afghans on board.
Also on Saturday/Sunday, a NATO soldier died in an ambush in southern Afghanistan, and two bombs exploded in Paktika and Kunduz Provinces, leaving a total of 10 civilians dead.
“Seventy-five percent of the dark things happening in the world economy are because of the eurozone.”-Timothy Geithner, U.S. Department of Treasury
September 9, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner blamed the European Union for U.S. economic failures!
Geithner made the comments at a G7 meeting in France. He says EU countries need to make even harsher cuts, and raise even more taxes, in order to solve their debt crisis. Going by his statements, can you guess what’s coming for the people of the United States?
“We will go to the UN to obtain international recognition for the state of Palestine, despite the obstacles and dangers, including U.S. threats to halt $470 million in annual assistance.”-Mahmoud Abbas, Acting Palestinian Authority (PA) Chief
Recently the United States said it would cut off aid (aid which is directly controlled by the Israelis) if Palestinians sought a United Nations vote on statehood.
More than 100 countries have so far officially recognized Palestine as a sovereign state based on the 1967 borders, the boundaries that existed before Israel militarily annexed East al-Quds (Jerusalem), the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian Authority has declared September 20 as the date when it would apply for United Nations recognition of Palestine as an independent state.
“Following the great success of the Libdex 2010 show we would like to invite yourself and relevant members of your staff to travel to the UK and visit Manroy Engineering so that we can demonstrate to yourself and your staff our products. This will include the full range of sniper weapons that were on show at the Libdex Show along with our other products that include our range of UK MOD machine guns.”-captured British embassy document
The British Sunday telegraph reveals documents, recovered by the media from the abandoned British embassy in Tripoli, that show the U.K. government pushed hard to get the Libyan government to buy more British made weapons, right before the foreign backed uprisings began.
The British guns were used weeks later by Libyan government forces to kill Libyan rebels.
The new revelation, shows the amount of collaboration between the United Kingdom and Gaddafi. In fact, the two British companies, Accuracy International and Manroy Engineering, defend their sales of weapons to Gaddafi, insisting Libya/Gaddafi was a favored regime with the United Kingdom, and former Prime Minister Tony Blair personally went to Libya to make the military sales!
Britain is one of the countries that are supporting the Libyan rebels.
“The government should take a fast step in removing the Israeli embassy from Amman in light of continued Zionist violations against the sovereignty and interests of Jordan.”-Islamic Action Front (IAF)
Jordanians praised the protests by the Egyptians against the Israeli embassy in Cairo.
Many Arabs, and Muslims, compare the storming of the Israeli embassy in Egypt with the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran following Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979.
“We predicted this (current) downturn in the U.S. 20 years ago.”-Harry S. Dent Jr
September 11, U.S. economist Harry S. Dent Jr is predicting a second, deeper downturn between the beginning and the middle of next year.
Dent says the downturn will start in Europe, spread to the United States, China and eventually Australia. He says Australia might not be the safest place to be: “Australia is probably the best place in the world to survive this, but we do think Australia will not escape as well as it did from the last crisis (in 2008).”
Dent says there are still ‘bubbles’ that need to burst. He believes gold and silver prices are overrated, and there are still housing bubbles around the world, like in Australia, Japan and China, that need to burst. The housing bubble that burst in the U.S. still hasn’t fully deflated.
Dent is in Australia to promote his book, The Great Crash Ahead – How to Prosper in the Debt Crisis of 2010-2012.