Cyprus has agreed to a ten billion euro ($13bn) deal with eurozone and IMF leaders to bail out its banks, and to prevent the Mediterranean island nation from exiting the European single currency. However, Cypriots can be forgiven for not taking to the streets to wave flags and honk their car horns. They’re finding out just what the “protection” afforded by the euro looks like, and it’s more akin to the kind offered by ski mask-wearing heavies in certain parts of New Jersey than the financial security Monsieur Trichet promised.
Under the terms of the deal, the country’s second-largest bank will be shut down, and its largest bank will be restructured. Depositors with more than €100,000 ($130,000) in either bank will face losses in the vicinity of 40 percent. In a bid to prevent a run on the island’s other banks and to stop money from fleeing the country, capital controls have been imposed — guaranteeing that there will still be capital flight once the restrictions are lifted.
The effect on the Cypriot economy will be catastrophic. Businesses serving the banking sector will begin to fail immediately, and others will follow. Property values will plummet and unemployment will soar as the country is plunged into recession.
For the past four years the world has watched as the Euro Zone countries have careened from one financial crisis to another. Each time the debacle of the day is papered over with yet another patch involving either more printing of euros, forced austerity budgets, or in the case of Cyprus (but eventually destined to occur in Spain and Portugal) the seizure of bankassets (i.e. deposits).
But these so-called fixes will never solve the problem as long as there is a death wish to maintain the euro as a viable currency regardless of the consequences. These nations can continue to shuffle the deck chairs on the Titanic only so long before the ship hits the iceberg.
The underlying problem in most countries is Europe is that their economies can no longer generate wealth and job creation. These nations do not have viable manufacturing or service sectors. Instead they are overwhelmingly consumption oriented, importing not only fuel but many consumer goods from elsewhere. Among the reasons for the spike in imported goods is that over the years these governments, in looking for revenue have taxed and regulated their industries into moving elsewhere.
As jobs become scarce there is a greater reliance on government spending on a variety of welfare programs. All the while the tax base diminishes as joblessness increases and wealth diminishes. The initial plan by the solons of smart in Strasbourg (the legislative headquarters of the European Union) was to force austerity on these nations in order to bring their deficits and debt down. However, when there is no real economic growth (in fact most of these nations are in a recession again) and thus no additional revenue to the government, which must provide for so many social programs that no austerity program will achieve their ultimate goal and in fact will only foment societal unrest.
Until these nations (i.e. Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and others) voluntarily opt out of the euro as their national currency and begin to get serious about rebuilding their economies, this will be a never-ending crisis repeated ever 4- 6 months until the entire house of cards collapses. Then there will be a globalfinancial crisis.
At first glance most Americans would ask: what does this mean for the United States? There are arcane issues concerning currency evaluations and money creation that deserve to be reviewed, however for the average American there is one important lesson: the future of the nation depends not on government or government spending but creating and maintaining a viable growingeconomy. Something this nation, with this current governing class is not doing nor does it have any intention to do so.
On the eve of Tuesday’s “March for Marriage” in Washington and Supreme Court consideration of court cases on homosexual rights, more evidence of the media bias driving the campaign to change America’s culture and Judeo-Christian foundations has emerged.
Speaking at a “gay journalists” event in New York City last Thursday night, Natalie Morales of the NBC Today Show declared, “Many of us here in this room — the media — we are responsible for opening the world’s eyes to these issues and the stories that have brought about such change. When you think 18 years ago when this organization was founded — think of where the country was back then. And now, 50 percent — according to the Pew poll that we talked about on the news today — support gay marriage, and…some other polls put that number even higher. [This] reflects a change in attitudes in this country.”
It's no wonder that Alexa.com tracks an article titled "Hand of God in Weather" on Weather.com as one of the most popular articles at the moment. What, with snow covering large parts of the U.S. this close to April and unseasonal weather hitting as far as the U.K., people are wondering what's going on.
A steady gainer is the Examiner piece titled "California fireball, Russian meteor, 2013 asteroid: God's end of world warning?" -- having garnered nearly 5,000 page views alone last month, according to Google Analytics.
Indeed, people are wondering what these seemingly frequent sinkhole occurrences have to do with God and the Bible, so that's where this reporter turned. The word "sinkhole" itself couldn't be found in Scripture, however, incidences of sinkhole like instances can be found by searching"earth opened" site:bible.cc in Google.
That turns up various instances whereby the "earth swallowed" up evil men, or a Revelation passage wherein the "…the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth."
Meteors, on the other hand, are mostly mentioned in biblical commentary -- ones that state the fireballs or "falling stars," as they were sometimes called, denoted a sign of evil times in the Bible.
Of course some of the most popular remembrances of meteors falling from the sky and fireballs hitting the earth in the Bible are during the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah -- "Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire…" -- but also in the New Testament, during the passages about the signs of Christ's return:
"But immediately after the tribulation of those days THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL FALL from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken," reads Matthew 24:29.
So it is interesting stuff, and the signs in the sky -- as well as searchers' interest on the web -- shows that people are not only looking at the changes in weather with a curious eye, but also a spiritual one.
“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of Light.”—Ephesians 5:8
“This then is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”—1 John 1:5
“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
And the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not comprehend it.” —John 1:4, 5
“This then is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”—1 John 1:5
“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
And the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not comprehend it.” —John 1:4, 5
As the apostle Paul admonished us, we should rejoice in the Lord always, not just on religious holidays such as Christmas and Easter, not just on Sundays, but always. For in truthevery day is the Lord’s day, and every location a potential place of worship.
“For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” 2 Peter 1:16
Jesus' followers were not country bumpkins who packed up and left home for all points of the compass, and reportedly suffered painful martyrdom, just for grins. Like Saul on the road to Damascus they had all experienced something that shook their world to the bone—something worth dying for, something worth living for. They did not just believe, they knew. Jesus had died and then come back from the dead, and theyknew it.
Now that’s something worth writing home about. That’s something worth celebrating and shouting from the roof tops.
Death had demonstrably been proven to be a fraud, a phony, an ephemeral boogie-man that disappeared when the Light was turned on.
Now that’s something worth writing home about. That’s something worth celebrating and shouting from the roof tops.
Death had demonstrably been proven to be a fraud, a phony, an ephemeral boogie-man that disappeared when the Light was turned on.
Many of us will celebrate Jesus’s Resurrection this Easter Sunday, as well we should. Permit me to suggest that we take the opportunity to commit, or re-commit ourselves to the reality of being “children of light.” Embrace the Light.
Islamic hard-liners stormed a mosque in suburban Cairo, turning it into torture chamber for Christians who had been demonstrating against the ruling Muslim Brotherhood in the latest case of violent persecution that experts fear will only get worse.
Such stories have become increasingly common as tensions between Egypt’s Muslims and Copts mount, but in the latest case, mosque officials corroborated much of the account and even filed a police report. Demonstrators, some of whom were Muslim, say they were taken from the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in suburban Cairo to a nearby mosque on Friday and tortured for hours by hard-line militia members.
"They accompanied me to one of the mosques in the area and I discovered the mosque was being used to imprison demonstrators and torture them,” Amir Ayad, a Coptic who has been a vocal protester against the regime, toldMidEast Christian News
from a hospital bed.
from a hospital bed.The latest crackdown is further confirmation that the Muslim Brotherhood’s most hard-line elements are consolidating control in Egypt, according to Shaul Gabbay, a professor of international studies at the University of Denver.
“It will only get worse,” said Gabbay. “This has been a longstanding conflict, but now that the Muslim Brotherhood is in power, it is moving forward to implement its ideology – which is that Christians are supposed to become Muslims.
“There is no longer anything to hold them back,” he continued. “The floodgates are open.”
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