Monday, August 1, 2011

China’s Plan to Beat U.S.: Missiles, Missiles and More Missiles

China is militarily weaker than many people think, especially compared to the United States. This, despite lots of showy jet prototypes and plenty of other factory-fresh equipment.

But Beijing has a brutally simple — if risky — plan to compensate for this relative weakness: buy missiles. And then, buy more of them. All kinds of missiles: short-range and long-range; land-based, air-launched and sea-launched; ballistic and cruise; guided and “dumb.”

Those are the two striking themes that emerge from Chinese Aerospace Power, a new collection of essays edited by Andrew Erickson, an influential China analyst with the U.S. Naval War College.

Today, the PLA possesses as many as 2,000 non-nuclear ballistic and cruise missiles, according to Chinese Aerospace Power. This “growing arsenal of increasingly accurate and lethal conventional ballistic and land-attack cruise missiles has rapidly emerged as a cornerstone of PLA warfighting capability,” Mark Stokes and Ian Easton wrote. For every category of weaponry where the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) lags behind the Pentagon, there’s a Chinese missile to help make up the difference.

The need is clear. Despite introducing a wide range of new hardware in recent years, including jet fighters, helicopters, destroyers, submarines and a refurbished Russian aircraft carrier, China still lacks many of the basic systems, organizations and procedures necessary to defeat a determined, well-equipped foe.

Take, for example, aerial refueling. To deploy large numbers of effective aerial tankers requires the ability to build and support large jet engines — something China cannot yet do. In-air refueling also demands planning and coordination beyond anything the PLA has ever pulled off. As a result, “tanker aircraft are in short supply” in the PLA, Wayne Ulman explained.

That’s putting it lightly. According to Chinese Aerospace Power, the entire PLA operates just 14 H-6U tankers, each carrying 17,000 kilograms of off-loadable fuel. (The U.S. Air Force alone possesses more than 500 tankers, each off-loading around 100,000 kilograms of fuel.) So while the PLA in theory boasts more than 1,500 jet fighters, in reality it can refuel only 50 or 60 at a time, assuming all the H-6 tankers are working perfectly.

In an air war over Taiwan, hundreds of miles from most Chinese bases, only those 50 fighters would be able to spend more than a few minutes’ flight time over the battlefield. Factoring in tankers, China’s 4–1 advantage in jet fighters compared to Taiwan actually shrinks to a roughly 7&ndash1 disadvantage. The gap only grows when you add U.S. fighters to the mix.

The PLA’s solution? Missiles, of course. Up to a thousand ballistic and cruise missiles, most of them fired by land-based launchers, “would likely comprise the initial strike” against Taiwan or U.S. Pacific bases, Ulman wrote. The goal would be to take out as many of an opponent’s aircraft as possible before the dogfighting even begins.

The PLA could take a similar approach to leveling its current disadvantage at sea. Submarines have always been the most potent ship-killers in any nation’s inventory, but China’s subs are too few, too noisy and their crews too inexperienced to take on the U.S. Navy. Once the shooting started, the “Chinese submarine force would be highly vulnerable,” Jeff Hagen predicted.

And forget using jet fighters armed with short-range weapons to attack the American navy. One Chinese analyst referenced in Chinese Aerospace Power estimated it would take between 150 and 200 Su-27-class fighters to destroy one U.S. Ticonderoga-class cruiser. The entire PLA operates only around 300 Su-27s and derivatives. The U.S. Navy has 22 Ticonderoga cruisers.

Again, missiles would compensate. A “supersaturation” attack by scores or hundreds of ballistic missiles has the potential of “instantly rendering the Ticonderoga’s air defenses useless,” Toshi Yoshihara wrote. Close to shore, China could use the older, less-precise, shorter-range missiles it already possesses in abundance. For longer-range strikes, the PLA is developing the DF-21D “carrier-killer” missile that uses satellites and aerial drones for precision targeting.

The downside to China’s missile-centric strategy is that it could represent a “single point of failure.” Over-relying on one weapon could render the PLA highly vulnerable to one kind of countermeasure. In this case, that’s the Pentagon’s anti-ballistic-missile systems, including warships carrying SM-3 missilesand land-based U.S. Army Patriot and Terminal High-Altitude Air-Defense batteries.

Plus, missiles are one-shot weapons. You don’t get to reuse them the way you would a jet fighter or a destroyer. That means, in wartime, China has to win fast — or lose. “China’s entire inventory of conventional ballistic missiles, for example, could deliver about a thousand tons of high explosives on their targets,” Roger Cliff explained. “The U.S. Air Force’s aircraft, by comparison, could deliver several times that amount of high explosives every day for an indefinite period.”

Danger Room
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Elenin Comet: 2 Assassinated Astronomers End Of The world?

ARTICLE COURTESY OF WIKISTRIKE

The team of Wikistrike consequently and lengthily reflected before publishing this information of the more high importance. This information could involve media and human consequences irreversible. According to our sources, we discovered the recent and suspect death of 2 astronomers, which counted among most important of the world. What you will read is exclusive and these assassinations would be as the irrefutable proof of what awaits us all.

PHOTO/BIO

Brian Geoffrey Marsden was born on August 5, 1937, he died on November 18, 2010. He was an astronomer américano-British; he was since 1978 the director of Minor Planet Center of the SAO located at Cambridge in Massachusetts. Minor Planet Center, under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union, it is the official organization in charge of the data-gathering of observation for small planets (asteroids) and comets, the calculation of their orbit and the publication of this information via Minor Planet Circulars…

.wikipedia.org

Al Rex Sandage was born on June 18, 1926 in Iowa city, Iowa (the United States), and died in San Gabriel (California) on November 13, 2010; it counted among the largest contemporary American astronomers. Born in an Jewish family, it converts towards the end of its life to Christianity. Sandage worked at the observatory of the Palomar Mount. This observatory belongs and is controlled by California Institue off technology (Caltech). One of the important programs allotted to the Palomar mount is the research program of comets and the asteroids géocroiseurs called Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT). the asteroids géocroiseurs are asteroids evolving/moving in the vicinity or in direction of the Earth. To name them one often uses abbreviation ECA, of English Earth-Crossing Asteroids, asteroids whose orbit crosses that of the Earth. Some of these objects being likely to run up against the Earth, they are the subject of a research and a particular follow-up…

The two men died of an acute encephalomyelitis. Disseminated acute encephalomyelitis or encéphalite post-infectious or encéphalite périveineuse are an inflammatory disease démyélinisante central nervous system. It is usually secondary with a viral, bacterial infection or with a vaccination but can also appear spontaneously. It consists of an auto-immune ignition leading to the destruction of the sheaths of myéline in the substance white, and present in this respect similarities (physiopathological, clinical and paraclinic) with the pushes of multiple sclerosis. It is a rare disease whose incidence is worth 0,8 cas/100 000 personnes/an and who preferentially touches the child and the teenager, the majority of the case occurring between 5 and 8 years. This fulgurating disease perhaps inoculated by means of an aerosol, very often arms used by the CIA.

The two astronomers died at 5 days of interval of the same disease, and which more is of an extremely rare disease. They were specialized in the observation and the research of comets. Death threats by the US government nothing to reveal on their discoveries concerning the trajectory and the real size of the comet Elenin, they persisted in wanting to reveal the facts with the general public but in vain. A few weeks later, the trajectory which is given officially to the general public by NASA will be obviously false. Work of Marsden and Sandage showed a proximity too much important. The consequences would be a bursting of the earth’s crust on the totality of the sphere. A true cataclysm. Half of humanity will be decimated.

Let us recall here that the physicist Michio Kaku, who had predicted the earthquakes in Japan, announces a world earthquake. The scientist of reputation, Michi Kaku, physicist, warns the citizens of the world of a méga potential earthquake. Michio Kaku decided in this direction during an appearance to the emission “Good Morning America”. He explained why there was very strong probability so that seisms of scale touch the planet Ground in several places…
He still explains that the ground is about to undergo strong jolts, a little everywhere, and affirms that the cities all over the world are not ready with this possibility…
More especially as several cities were built in places which it had been held better for some shacks of fishermen…
Michio Kaku does not spare its words: “People should expect to see disappearing from the cities as important as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Mexico City City, Teheran, Tokyo. Moreover, in fact the big cities will be most favourable to suffer damage. ”
Kaku concluded while saying “It is necessary to remember earthquake of magnitude 8.8 which took place in Chile in 2010! It was so considerable that it literally made deviate planet of 8 centimetres (3 inches); and since this violent jolt our days do not have 24 hours really any more exactly!

It knows very well that this world earthquake will be due in the months which come in the passing from the Elenin comet, which is not a comet but dwarf brown, a planet 5 times superior in Jupiter, which passes in our solar system every 3600 years. Its orbit makes it go and come between our system and that from Orion.

This planet bears much name: Nibiru, Marduk, Nemesis, Tyche, Elenin, planet X, Hercolubus, red planet.

Nibiru (in sumérien) the mythical planet. Babylonian and the akkadiens named it Mardouk, meaning king of the skies. The Egyptians and Hebrew represented it in the shape of a winged disc because of its immense elliptic orbit in the shape of spread wings. The Greeks named it them Némésis.

The apocalypse of Midsummer’s Day mentions this star.

Elenin is dwarf brown, a dark star. The majority of dwarf brown only float in space, which confirms that they are formed like stars and not like planets. The dwarf brown ones are not easily observable, since they emit only one weak radiation in the infra-red. And this is why, in Greek mythology, the Orion giant walks towards the east plugged by the sun… where it will finish by recovered the sight. The myth of Orion shows well that the Elenin planet, coming from the system from Orion, the large hunter, is plugged by the sun, because indeed the dwarf brown ones are almost invisible because they emit only one weak radiation in the infra-red. If all the myths speak about the same star related to the flood, because the Orion hunter was praised to be the only being able to destroy any life on ground, then there is to fear much and in the months which come, the end of the world could start well.

It is necessary to find refuge in mountain and far from the coasts. Made bunkers, reserves of food, books, it will be necessary to preserve all that you will be able for those which can, for those which will want. The life expectancy of the human beings on our planet is of approximately 60 years. It is very little, Wikistrike requires of all its readers to pose fundamental questions on their existence. Death is not an end, then flood or not, world cataclysm without precedent or not, live each day as if it were the last, are happy, are constructive and positive, because to sink in any case in general panic will save us at all, it does not have no loophole there.

Good luck with all.

Marc Bildermann for WikiStrike

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Celente Report

PIIGS, PRESSTITUTES AND THE GLOBAL MELTDOWN

KINGSTON, NY, 13 July 2011 — “Read All About It!” You couldn’t not read all about it! The media was full of reports about how happy stock market days were here again. After a stormy start, June closed and July began with US benchmark indexes racking up their biggest weekly gains in two years on good news: the US manufacturing index had unexpectedly risen, and the beleaguered debt-burdened Greeks were bailed out yet again – piling un-payable new debt on top of un-payable old debt.

Yes, there was some concern, but, as The New York Times reported on June 25th, “Two years into the official recovery, the economy is still behaving like a plane taxiing indefinitely on the runway. Few economists are predicting an out-and-out return to recession … analysts generally expect the economy to pick up in the second half.”

The economists were forecasting strong job growth for June. But two weeks later, when the numbers came in, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that only 18,000 jobs had been created – not the 125,000 jobs projected … by those same economists who were also not “predicting an out-and-out return to recession.”

Accordingly, without missing a beat, the Times changed its tune – writing new words to replace the old words they would never be forced to eat:

Feeble Job Numbers Show
Recovery Starting to Stall

Defying Economists Forecast for Hiring,
Unemployment Creeps Up to 9.2%???

For the second consecutive month, employers added scarcely any jobs in June, startling evidence that the economic recovery is stumbling … The government also revised downward the small gain for the previous month to 25,000 new jobs, less than half the original estimate. (The New York Times, 9 July 2011)

“Dismal Jobs Data Rock US Recovery” and “Worries Grow Over Jobs,” read the respective headlines in the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal on July 9th, dissipating the air of optimism that had recently rallied equity markets.

“Employment!” More than factory orders, GDP, corporate profits, retail sales, durable goods … employment was the one big number that counted. There was no way to spin the consequences of 18,000 mostly low paying health care and hospitality jobs into the hopeful message implied by the 125,000 jobs forecast by most economists.

The equation was simple; the more people out of work, the less they consume. And in the United States, where consumer spending accounts for an estimated 70 percent of the GDP, without increased consumer spending, the economy was again recession bound.

Virtually overnight, one dire employment report unraveled two years’ worth of government spin and media complicity. In April 2010, Vice President Joseph Biden promised, “we're going to be creating between 250,000 jobs a month and 500,000 jobs a month." And in August 2010, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner declared that the “actions we took at its height [of the crisis] to stimulate the economy helped arrest the freefall, preventing an even deeper collapse and putting the economy on the road to recovery.”

But almost a year later, talking on “Meet the Press,” two days after the devastating employment data was released, the new, revised Geithner forecast was, “Oh, I think it’s [the recovery] going to take a long time still. This is a very tough economy. And I think for a lot of people it’s going to be – it’s going to feel very hard, harder than anything they’ve experienced in their lifetime now, for some time to come.”

Like the Biden boast long-buried and un-exhumed, the Geithner statement, a direct contradiction of his former projection went unchallenged, given the usual free pass by the “Meet the Press” Presstitutes.

There was, and is, no “return to recession.” As The Trends Research Institute had been forecasting since the onset of the Great Recession and the “Panic of ’08,” all those "bold actions" proudly cited by Geithner were no more than financial Prozac – multi-trillion-dollar band aids, palliatives, placebos and cover-ups packaged as TARP, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, QE2, and so on. At best, the “bold actions” merely guided the Great Recession into a brief remission, and that is all.

Global Ponzi It was a cover-up, not a recovery. And while the US may have been the first, it was not the only nation to try to fraudulently finagle its way out of a crisis and into prosperity. Like the US bailouts, the Greek survival package – praised as an important stopgap success only last week – has neither guaranteed keeping the Greek banking system afloat nor guaranteed it won’t default.

Now Italy has caught the contagion. Fattest of the PIIGS (acronym for Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) – the eurozone’s third largest economy – with its 120 percent public debt to GDP ratio, Italy is bleeding red ink all over its balance sheet. Borrowing more to service its debt load and imposing draconian austerity measures to reign in government spending will, at best, provide a respite from the financial crisis … or, at worst, foment a revolution. (See, “Off With Their Heads, 2.0, Trends Journal, Autumn 2010)

Then there’s China, who panicked when the “Panic of 08” blew out their export driven economy, and, like the West, used cheap credit and huge stimulus packages to prevent a major economic contraction. While China’s crisis differs from the West’s in that it has large currency reserves and its debt is homegrown and home-loaned, it’s still debt and has to be repaid.

And unlike the West, which pumped trillions into just keeping its economies afloat, the Chinese multi-trillion yuan infusions have created an immense, ready-to-pop property bubble. But this time, like the West, there will be no available fiscal or monetary government policies to re-inflate their faltering economy.

And as goes the US, Europe and China – so goes the rest of the world. From India to Israel, Brazil to Bangladesh, Chile to Russia, no nation will escape the economic fallout and few will escape the political consequences.

Yet, despite the widely available economic facts and the ample evidence of faulty forecasts and failed government policies, the mainstream media continues to sell the public the big lie. By providing cover for the politicians and financiers, the Presstitutes of the world – with their stable of “well respected” pundits – are accomplices in promoting the egregiously transparent cover-up as a “recovery.”

Trendpost: After descending to $1,480 less than two weeks ago, as this is written, gold is flirting with $1,600. We see this surge as a recognition of the greater financial and socioeconomic collapse we have been forecasting since the onset of the “Panic of ’08.” We hold to our forecast of “Gold $2,000,” and depending on how the coming crisis unfolds and the responses to it made by governments and central banks, $2,000 may prove but a temporary ceiling before climbing higher.
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Netanyahu stressed, may start war

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Need work? Get a job first!

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Somalia famine: African Union calls 'pledging summit

The African Union has announced it is to hold a summit meeting to pledge help for the victims of Somalia's drought.

The statement comes after considerable criticism in the African media of the failure of the continent's leaders to help famine victims across the Horn of Africa.

The AU said the pledging conference would bring together heads of state and international donors.

The United Nations says the famine is spreading across southern Somalia.

The African Union statement was made by its deputy chairman, Erasmus Mwencha, during a visit to the AU peacekeeping mission in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

"I ask the African continent, from the northern cape to the southern cape, to look hard at how they can contribute to alleviating the suffering," said Mr Mwencha.

But he gave no date for the summit.

His call came as the United Nations warned that the crisis was intensifying, with more than 12 million people in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti urgently needing help.

The UN says that tens of thousands have already died and hundreds of thousands are at risk of starvation.

BBC

More:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14357126

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'Default debacle a charade, US to pay price if debt balloon bursts'

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America’s ‘Great Recession’ even greater than thought

WASHINGTON — The “Great Recession” was even greater than previously thought, and the U.S. economy has skated uncomfortably close to a new one this year.

New data on Friday showed the 2007-2009 U.S. recession was much more severe than prior measures had found, with economic output declining a cumulative of 5.1% instead of 4.1%.

The report also showed the current slowdown began earlier and has been deeper than previously thought, with growth in the first quarter advancing at only a 0.4% annual pace.

The data indicated the economy began slowing in the fourth quarter of last year before high gasoline prices and supply chain disruptions from Japan’s earthquake had hit, suggesting the weakness is more fundamental and less temporary than economists had believed.

The annual revisions of U.S. GDP data from the Commerce Department showed economic growth contracted at an annual average rate of 0.3% between 2007 and 2010. Output over that stretch had previously been estimated to have been flat.

At the depth of the recession in the fourth quarter of 2008, output plummeted at an annual rate of 8.9% — the steepest quarterly decline since 1958, and 2.1 percentage points more than previously reported.

The recession was already the deepest since the Great Depression and, while it still pales in comparison, the data help explain why it is taking so long to shake off its legacy.

“The general picture of the recession remains pretty much the same, it was a record decline before and now it is a even bigger decline,” Steven Landefeld, the director of the department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, told reporters.

The economy was weaker in both 2008 and 2009 than had been thought. Gross domestic product contracted 0.3% in 2008; the department had previously reported it was flat. In 2009, it shrank 3.5% instead of 2.6%.

In the first quarter of 2009, the economy shrank at a 6.7% pace, 1.8 percentage points more than had been thought.

When growth finally resumed in the second half of 2009 after four straight quarters of contraction, it was less vigorous than thought. Growth in the fourth quarter of 2009 was cut to a 3.8% pace from a previously reported 5.0% rate.

The revisions also showed weaker income growth. Disposable income adjusted for inflation grew at an average annual rate of 0.6% between 2007 and 2010, rather than 1.2%.

At the same time, households saved less in 2009 and 2010. Perhaps surprisingly, corporate taxes were stronger than had been thought in 2009 and 2010.

TROUBLING 2010-2011 SLOWDOWN

The data was released Friday along with the government’s first estimate of second quarter GDP, which advanced at a meager and weaker-than-expected 1.3% rate.

Not only did the economy skirt perilously close to a contraction in the first quarter, growth in the fourth quarter of last year was at a tepid 2.3% annual rate, not the solid 3.1% pace that had been believed.

The downward revision to the first quarter was even sharper. Previous figures had shown the economy advanced at a 1.9% rate.

A combination of bad weather, high gasoline prices and disruptions to manufacturing after the March earthquake in Japan had been blamed for this year’s slowdown.

But the surprisingly weak tone in the data so far this year and the downward revisions to growth in the fourth quarter before those headwinds hit suggest those transitory factors bear less of the blame than thought.

Reuters

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Gerald Celente on US debt insanity

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“The Debt Ceiling is the Least of Our Worries”

“The debt ceiling is the least of our worries.”

That is how Barry Ritholtz, CEO of FusionIQ and author of The Big Picture, concluded his Washington Post article from this past weekend.

In a piece entitled Debt ceiling: 10 lessons beyond that crisis, Ritholtz argued that many financial and economic issues in the U.S. more important than the debt ceiling unfortunately remain unresolved.

“We have created an intensely concentrated financial industry, where a handful of banks control the majority of assets,” he wrote. ”Competition is less than it was before the crisis, and bank fees are creeping upwards. While risk-taking remains rather subdued, history informs us it is likely to return as the crisis fades in the collective memory. The bailouts left us with a legacy of poor balance sheets and moral hazard. None of 10 factors discussed above have been, in any meaningful way, resolved.”

To his credit, Ritholtz was one of the few market pundits waving the red flag over the housing and credit bubbles in 2006 and 2007, prior to the financial crisis.

His ten unresolved issues consisted of ultra-low interest rates by the Federal Reserve, the flawed rating agencies model, radical deregulation of derivatives, subprime loans, leverage rules, mortgage underwriting standards, automated underwriting, the repeal of Glass Steagall, state banking regulations, and the GSE’s (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac).

In light of these items, Ritholtz noted that “We’ve got some major and prolonged challenges: ongoing debt issues, structural unemployment, a housing overhang and continued economic frailty.”

While he did not discuss the investment implications of these matters in the article, the significant uncertainty stemming from these issues is likely to provide a favorable environment for gold and other safe haven asset classes.

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America is merely wounded, Europe risks death

Needless to say, these are not normal times. The US and EU debt crises are feeding on each other in a dangerous synergy, with fears of a fiscal “sudden stop” in Washington causing global risk aversion and aggravating tremors in the Spanish and Italian bond markets. It is a pre-taste of the “catastrophe” predicted by the Fed’s Ben Bernanke if politicians fail to control their passions.

And yet, data from the St Louis Fed show that America’s M2 money supply grew at a 6.4pc annual rate in the second quarter, accelerating to 12.2pc in June. The compound annual rate of change has exceeded 40pc over recent weeks.

The broader M3 indicator (including large savings deposits) is growing at the optimal rate of around 5pc. It has been an uncannily accurate lead indicator at each twist and turn of our economic drama over the past five years, and is telling us now that the Fed’s kindling wood has at last begun to ignite the damp coals of the US financial system. There is no longer a 1930s liquidity trap. We can infer that the housing market may be nearing the end of its deep slump.

The economy is curing itself in time-honoured fashion. Whether this monetary cure will be allowed to run its course depends on politicians in Washington, Berlin, Rome and Madrid.

My recurring nightmare ever since the Western debt edifice began to crumble four years ago is that the denouement would track the events of mid-1931, when leaders failed to reform a destructive fixed exchange system (Gold Standard) and the fuse finally detonated on Europe’s banking system. It was when political blunders turned recession into the Great Depression, and ideology intruded with a vengeance.

The narrative of 1931 is already well-known to readers. France sabotaged a rescue of Vienna’s Credit Anstalt because of strategic disputes with Germany. This set off a financial chain reaction. Frightened markets tested the weak links of the Gold Standard. They withdrew funds from Britain after naval ratings “mutinied” over pay cuts. Contagion spread back to New York. By October 1931 the international system had collapsed, though the full horror did not become evident until the next year. A string of countries retreated into variants of autarky, or fascism, or both. Communists and Nazis together won more than half the seats in the Reichstag election of July 1932.

It is far from clear that the international order is more secure today than it was in the seemingly calm days of May 1931, so one cannot lightly forgive the reckless brinkmanship on Capitol Hill over recent days.

I write before knowing the outcome of weekend talks but we can rule out any form of US default. President Barack Obama can invoke the 14th Amendment in extremis, or issue a Bush-style “Catastrophic Emergency” directive.

The more plausible risk is that the debt ceiling is not raised, forcing a ferocious fiscal squeeze to avoid default. Washington would have to slash spending at an annual rate equal to 11pc of GDP, and do so in a disorderly fashion that would shatter confidence.

There are historical cases of respectable growth following fiscal contractions, not least in Britain after 1932 and 1993, but the scale of cuts needed to close America’s double-digit deficit at a stroke is of an entirely different order. You do not have to be Keynesian to see the dangers of such a violent shock in an over-leveraged economy.

If cuts continued into September without either side blinking, the knock-on effects might rapidly set off serial defaults by states and an implosion of the $2.5 trillion municipal bond market. The bankruptcy saga of Jefferson County, Alabama, is a foretaste.

Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, New Mexico and Tennessee have all been put on negative watch. California has had to raise an emergency $5bn loan. Nevada is spending half its tax-take on debt service costs, and Michigan 40pc. These states are hanging on by their fingernails.

Yet if disaster is an outside risk in America, it is an odds-on likelihood in Europe. It is already clear that the latest EU summit deal is too little to stop a spiralling crisis in confidence, let alone acknowledge that North and South have diverged too far to share a currency union. Spanish and Italian yields are back to pre-summit danger levels, and might fly out of control at any moment unless a lender-of-last resort steps in to guarantee the market.