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Their are perfect!

French Vivendi is Europe's largest and one of the world's biggest telecom and entertainment group, they own 52%% of Activision Blizzard, the world's largest maker of video game behind games such as StarCraft, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Guitare Hero, DJ Hero and Call of Duty and they also owns Universal Music Group, the world's biggest music publisher:

reuters.com - PARIS, Sept 1 (Reuters) - Europe's largest telecom and entertainment group, Vivendi (VIV.PA), raised its profit targets on the back of forecast-beating first-half results and reassured investors on its acquisition strategy, lifting its flagging stock.

Vivendi shares have slid to seven-year lows relative to the European market, largely underperforming peers on concerns about acquisitions, the cost of a U.S. class-action lawsuit and intensifying competition in the French telecom sector.

Chief Executive Jean-Bernard Levy sought to turn the page on Wednesday, pledging to maintain or raise its dividend through 2012, confirming plans to buy out minority shareholders in its French telecom and pay-TV units and playing down legal risks.

"Vivendi is back to growth in the first half of 2010 and improves its full-year outlook," Levy said.

First-half operating profit rose 12 percent, driven by growth at French telecom operator SFR and its latest acquisition, Brazilian fixed-line telecom operator GVT.

The stock rose 4.1 percent to 19.16 euros ($24.52) by 1224 GMT, having risen almost 11 percent since Thursday, before when it had lost 16.5 percent since the start of 2010. The STOXX Europe 600 media .SXMP and telecoms .SXKP indexes are up around 5 percent and 3 percent this year.

"Today's release gives confidence and visibility on the company's businesses and confirms the fundamentals. Investors should also be comforted by the comments on the lawsuit and acquisitions like SFR," said a Paris-based analyst.

A London-based analyst agreed: "Improving earnings momentum and the likelihood of an SFR buyout drawing nearer should push the shares higher."


DIVIDEND PLEDGE

Vivendi raised its 2010 guidance to an "increase" in earnings before interest, taxes and amortisation (EBITA), compared with a previous forecast of "slight growth". It also gave guidance on its adjusted net income for the first time, forecasting it would rise from 2.59 billion euros in 2009.

First-half operating profit rose to 3.24 billion euros ($4.1 billion), compared with a mean estimate of 3.01 billion euros in a Reuters poll. Revenue rose 6.1 percent to 13.98 billion euros.

Vivendi pledged to maintain its 2010 dividend at 1.40 euros per share and pay at least that amount in the next two years.

SFR, 56 percent owned by Vivendi and the rest by Vodafone (VOD.L), posted strong first-half results as it trounced competitors France Telecom (FTE.PA) and Iliad (ILD.PA) in terms of new client recruitments.

Operating profit at SFR, which accounts for more than half of Vivendi's revenue, rose 6.6 percent to 2.1 billion euros, far ahead of analysts' average expectations of 1.3 billion euros.

"It has always been a strategic objective of ours to hold 100 percent of our French telecoms business," Levy said, adding that it could use proceeds from the sale of its NBC Universal stake set to come in later this year. [ID:nLDE67G18L] [ID:nLDE65N0VK]

Asked about buying out Lagardere's (LAGA.PA) 20 percent stake in the French operations of pay-TV unit Canal+, Levy said Vivendi would think about Lagardere's plans for an initial public offering of the stake. [ID:nLDE67M1D8]

"We have to make a decision at some point on whether this is an opportunity for us (to take whole ownership of Canal+) or not," he said.


DIMINISHED RISK

Vivendi's holding company structure, under which it does not wholly own its major divisions, has led investors to apply a 25 to 40 percent conglomerate discount. The company had 11.5 billion euros of debt at the end of June.

Addressing the risks of a class-action lawsuit alleging the group misled shareholders on its financial health in 2000-2002, Levy pointed to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that excludes non-U.S. shareholders from class actions.

"The decision means that the risk of the case has largely diminished for us and we will reduce the (550 million euro) provision in our accounts for 2009 as a result," he said, declining to say by how much or when.

Levy added that Vivendi would raise its annual targets for GVT, SFR's fixed and broadband business and video games maker Activision (ATVI.O).

Maroc Telecom (IAM.PA) and gaming unit Activision Blizzard Inc (ATVI.O) confirmed guidance for the year.

Below you see the list of the World’s 50 Safest Banks, as you can see many are European (30) and few are from USA (4). The safest bank in 2010 is French!:

Global Finance names the World's 50 Safest Banks 2010

gfmag.com - NEW YORK, August 30, 2010 – With bank stability still high on corporate and investor agendas, Global Finance publishes its 19th annual list of the world’s safest banks.

The “World’s 50 Safest Banks” 2010 were selected through a comparison of the long-term credit ratings and total assets of the 500 largest banks around the world. Ratings from Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch were used.

Global Finance has published its “World’s Safest Banks” listing for 19 years and this ranking has become a recognized and trusted standard of creditworthiness for the entire financial world.

“Banks that have strengthened their liquidity positions and the quality and quantity of their capital are recognized in these rankings,” says Global Finance publisher Joseph D. Giarraputo. “More than ever, customers around the world are viewing long-term creditworthiness as the key feature of banks with which they do business.”

[Fannie and Freddie losses hit $226bn]

Here is more news about these two companies, thier losses now hit $226bn:

Fannie and Freddie losses hit $226bn

www.FT.com - Suzanne Kapner, August 27 2010 - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed mortgage finance companies, have burnt through $226bn in capital since the middle of 2007, according to a government report published on Thursday.

The vast majority of those losses, or about $166bn, came from guaranteeing loans on single-family homes, according to the first in what will be a series of quarterly reports from the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie and Freddie.
An additional $21bn was lost on their investment portfolios, which buy loans in the secondary market. Fannie and Freddie have also paid $13m in dividends to the US Treasury on senior preferred stock issued as part of their government bail-out.

The remainder of the losses include accounting adjustments and write downs on low income tax credits.

Ballooning losses at Fannie and Freddie, which have taken $148bn in government aid to stay afloat, have become a subject of intense debate in Washington as Democrats come under pressure to find a solution to the housing crisis ahead of the November elections.

Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, hosted a conference last week at which policymakers, academics and investors traded ideas about how to solve the problem.

Legislators have promised to make the issue a priority this autumn.

Most of the decision-makers agree that the government needs to continue to provide some kind of guarantee to backstop home loans, but what form that guarantee should take is still up for debate. One suggestion is to create a system similar to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, in which mortgage originators pay into an insurance fund upfront to cover catastrophic losses later on.

Whether Fannie and Freddie were victims of the housing bubble or helped create the mess has also been up for discussion. The report found that from 2004 to 2007 Fannie and Freddie actually lost market share to banks that issued private label mortgage-backed securities as exotic home loans played a bigger role in the market.

By 2007, however, with the financial crisis in full swing and the private market frozen, Fannie and Freddie became the only game in town. The two government-backed agencies now guarantee or buy one out of nine loans issued on Friday.

Much of the damage was done in a relatively short period of time, from 2006 to 2007, when Fannie and Freddie started buying more high-risk loans.

By the fourth quarter of 2009, delinquency rates on those loans had more than doubled. Loans underwritten in California, Florida, Arizona and Nevada accounted for a disproportionate share of losses.

The report also found that since Fannie and Freddie were taken over by the government in 2008, the credit quality of the new mortgages they’ve acquired has “improved substantially”.

Good news for Europe, “China has confidence in Europe’s economy, in the euro, and the euro area,” Yu said. A member of the state-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences - Too bad China cant say that about the US:

bloomberg.com - China, whose $2.45 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves are the world’s largest, is turning bullish on Europe and Japan at the expense of the U.S.

The nation has been buying “quite a lot” of European bonds, said Yu Yongding, a former adviser to the People’s Bank of China who was part of a foreign-policy advisory committee that visited France, Spain and Germany from June 20 to July 2. Japan’s Ministry of Finance said Aug. 9 that China bought 1.73 trillion yen ($20.1 billion) more Japanese debt than it sold in the first half of 2010, the fastest pace of purchases in at least five years.

“Diversification should be a basic principle,” Yu said in an interview, adding a “top-level Chinese central banker” told him to convey to European policy makers China’s confidence in the region’s economy and currency. “We didn’t sell any European bonds or assets, instead we bought quite a lot.”

China’s position may make it harder for the greenback to rebound after falling as much as 10 percent from this year’s peak in June as measured by the trade-weighted Dollar Index. The nation cut its holdings of U.S. government debt by $72.2 billion, or 7.7 percent, through May from last year’s record of $939.9 billion in July 2009, according to the Treasury Department, which releases new data today.

U.S. Concerns

Concern the U.S. economy is faltering was underscored by the Federal Reserve on Aug. 10. Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the central bank will reinvest principal payments on its mortgage holdings into Treasury notes to prevent money from being drained out of the financial system, its first expansion of measures to spur growth in more than a year.

“The pace of economic recovery is likely to be more modest in the near term than had been anticipated,” the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement after meeting in Washington. “The Committee will keep constant the Federal Reserve’s holdings of securities at their current level.”

Asian central banks holding some 60 percent of the world’s foreign-exchange reserves are turning away from the dollar. Concerned about weakening U.S. growth and the Treasury’s record borrowing, they are switching toward euro assets to safeguard reserves, driving gains in the 16-nation currency. South Korea, Malaysia and India reduced their holdings of Treasuries, U.S. government data show.

Cutting Treasuries

The allocations to dollars in official foreign-exchange reserves declined in the first three months of the year, to 61.5 percent from 62.2 percent in the final quarter of 2009, the International Monetary Fund said June 30.

The yen’s share was 3.1 percent, up from 3 percent, The euro’s was 27.2 percent, little changed from 27.3 percent, even after the currency tumbled 5.7 percent versus the dollar during the first quarter on speculation that nations including Greece will struggle to rein in their budget deficits.

“Short of concerns of a default, the investor community in terms of big reserve managers will probably be forced to invest in the euro zone,” said Dwyfor Evans, a strategist in Hong Kong at State Street Global Markets LLC, part of State Street Corp. which has $19 trillion under custody and $1.8 trillion under management. “They can’t be putting all of their eggs in one basket, which is U.S. Treasuries.”

Dollar Index

The Dollar Index’s 5.2 percent drop in July, the biggest decline in 14 months, failed to dissuade most foreign-exchange forecasters from predicting the greenback will strengthen against the euro and yen by December.

The dollar traded at $1.2817 per euro as of 7:13 a.m. in New York from $1.2754 last week, when it rose 4.1 percent. The greenback was at 85.60 yen after falling to 84.73 yen on Aug. 11, the weakest since July 1995.

The U.S. currency will climb to $1.23 per euro by Dec. 31 and to 92 yen, based on median estimates of strategists and economists in Bloomberg surveys. Economists forecast U.S. growth will be 3 percent this year, compared with 1.2 percent for the region sharing the euro and 3.4 percent for Japan.

“There’s no sign of panic or urgency from the Fed and that supports our view that this is a temporary soft patch and the U.S. economy will fight its way through,” said Gareth Berry, a Singapore-based currency strategist at UBS AG, the world’s second-largest foreign-exchange trader. UBS forecasts the dollar will rise to $1.15 per euro and 95 yen in three months.

Slower Growth

Japan’s economy expanded at the slowest pace in three quarters, missing the estimates of all economists polled, the Cabinet Office said today in Tokyo. Gross domestic product rose an annualized 0.4 percent in the three months ended June 30, compared with the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey for annual growth of 2.3 percent.

Slowing purchases of Treasuries by Asian nations haven’t hindered President Barack Obama’s ability to finance a projected record budget deficit of $1.6 trillion in the year ending Sept. 30. Investor demand for the safest investments compressed yields on benchmark 10-year Treasury notes to a 16-month low of 2.65 percent today, even after the U.S.’s publicly traded debt swelled to $8.18 trillion in July.

U.S. mutual funds, households and banks in May boosted their share of America’s debt to 50.2 percent, the first time domestic investors owned more Treasuries than foreign holders since the start of the financial crisis in August 2007.

‘Concrete Steps’

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao urged the U.S. in March to take “concrete steps” to reassure investors about the safety of dollar assets. The nation, which is the largest overseas holder of Treasuries, trimmed its stockpile of U.S. debt to $867.7 billion in May, from $900.2 billion in April and a record $939.9 billion in July 2009.

Increases to its holdings made between June 2008 and June 2009 amid the global financial crisis were mostly in short-term securities, signaling a “lack of confidence” in the U.S. ability to reduce its debt, UBS said in a research note Aug. 9.

“China has confidence in Europe’s economy, in the euro, and the euro area,” Yu said. A member of the state-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Yu was selected by the official China Daily to question Treasury secretary Timothy F. Geithner during his June 2009 visit to Beijing about risks the U.S.’s budget deficit will undermine the value of its debt.

Chinese Purchases

Chinese purchases of Europe’s bonds come in the wake of measures taken by European policy makers to allay concern the sovereign-debt crisis will threaten the single-currency union. In May, they announced a loan package worth as much as 750 billion euros ($956 billion) to backstop euro-area governments.

That month, foreign investors were net buyers of euro-zone debt as the 16-nation currency plummeted by the most since January 2009. Foreigners purchased 37.4 billion euros of bonds and notes after buying 49.7 billion euros in April, the latest data from the European Central Bank show.

China’s concern is mirrored by neighboring central banks that are building up foreign-exchange reserves as they sell local currencies to maintain the competiveness of exporters, according to Faros Trading LLC, which conducts currency transactions on behalf of hedge funds and institutional clients.

Indonesia’s central bank and Thailand’s prime minister said in the past month they are watching the performance of their nation’s currencies amid speculation gains will curb exports. Taiwan’s dollar has depreciated in the final minutes of trading on most days in the past four months as policy makers bought dollars, according to traders familiar with the central bank’s operations who declined to be identified. Exports account for about two-thirds of Taiwan’s gross domestic product.

‘Rapidly Diversifying’

“Asian central banks, other than China, don’t want to be caught holding all of the dollars when China is rapidly diversifying,” said Brad Bechtel, a Connecticut-based managing director with Faros Trading. “When sentiment shifts and people start getting very bearish on the euro again, beware central banks might be aggressively buying euros on the other side.”

The yen has climbed 8.4 percent against the dollar this year. China bought a net 456.4 billion yen of Japanese debt in June, after purchasing 735.2 billion yen in May, which was the largest in records dating from 2005, according to Japan’s Ministry of Finance data.

“China’s policy of steady and relatively rapid accumulation of foreign-exchange reserves means they have to be invested somewhere,” said Greg Gibbs, a currency strategist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in Sydney. “It is easy to imagine that given the low yields in the U.S. and the debt crisis in Europe, China is now willing to invest more of these reserves in the yen.”

Europe booms with Germany as its engine, while the US is going to see a double dip recession. "Superman is wearing black, red and gold this year, Germany's national colours". Germany grew at an annualised rate of more than 8 per cent!



Europe has a huge potential growth source, a lower euro! Just see how Germany booms when we go to 1.2 dollars per euro, image what would happen if we reach parity?

cnn.com - Germany on Friday reasserted itself as the economic growth engine of the eurozone, after gross domestic product expanded at a stellar 2.2 percent rate in the second quarter compared with the previous three months.

Buoyant exports, aided by a decline in the value of the euro, helped Europe's largest economy post its fastest expansion since reunification in 1991, equivalent to an annualised rate of more than 8 per cent.

France also exceeded market expectations, albeit more modestly, with a 0.6 per cent rise in GDP growth for the period. It doubled its estimate of first-quarter growth to 0.2 per cent.

The great leader speaks to his beloved people:

 
news.yahoo.com - Washington - US President Barack Obama has said that America had returned to robust competitiveness and the danger of jobs and industries fleeing to countries like China, India or Germany was over. "When I took office, we put in place a new economic plan that rewards hard work instead of greed; a plan that rewards responsibility instead of reckless; a plan that focused on our middle class, (and) making them more secure," Obama said at a Democratic Fund Raiser in Austin, Texas.

The US President said that the US "was competitive over the long run so the jobs and industries of the future werent going to China or India or Germany, but were going to the United States of America, right here." Gradually entering into an election mode with the mid-term elections less than three months ago, the US President has been frequently in his public speeches claiming how his policies are aimed towards stopping outsourcing of jobs and manufacturing.

Instead of spending money on special interest tax loopholes that don''t create American jobs, we said we''re going to make smart investments in education and innovation and clean energy that will benefit all people and our entire economy, he said. "Instead of giving special interests free rein to write their own regulations, we demanded new accountability from Washington to Wall Street so that big corporations had to play by the same rules as small companies and by individuals.

That''s only fair," Obama said. Observing that it took nearly a decade to enter the current phase of the economic mess he inherited, Obama said it''s going to take some more time to "dig our way out" of that hole.

"The devastation that has touched so many of our families, so many of our communities, that is going to take some time to heal. And I hear those stories firsthand wherever I travel.

I hear about them in the letters that I receive every night that I read from people who are doing their best to keep on striving towards that American Dream, but keep on hitting a bunch of road blocks and are looking for help. So the road to recovery is long and its filled with challenges.

And I''m under no illusion that weve gotten there yet. We''ve got a lot more work to do," he said.

Continuing with his critic of the Republican policies, Obama said: "We''ve got a choice between a forward-looking agenda that is rebuilding the structure of this economy so it''s working for all Americans, or just going back to the same stuff that got us into this mess."

- I didnt look at the India /US tradenumbers yet, but below you see the US monthly trade with China:



and now Germany below:

- As you can see the US has run tradedeficits each month for pretty much the last 20 years....

Here are the tradenumbers for US and China, as you can see the US is running a huge deficit:


  

I have been saying this for years:

cnbc.com - America is a "Mickey Mouse economy" that is technically bankrupt, according to Jochen Wermuth, the Chief Investment Officer (CIO) and managing partner at Wermuth Asset Management.

"America today looks like Russia in 1998. Consumers, companies and the government are all highly indebted. America as a result is a bankrupt Mickey Mouse economy," Wermuth told CNBC.

The comments followed news that the Fed was extending its quantitative easing program following what the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) described as a fall in the pace of growth in output and employment.

The Fed has spent the past three years on a route of aggressive rate cuts and purchases of trillions in various securities but it is running out of measures it can take, Pimco's co-CEO Mohamed El-Erian told CNBC.

Wermuth is a fund manager heavily invested in Russia and says if the same International Monetary Fund (IMF) team that managed the financial crisis in the former super power in 1998 now turned up at the US Treasury, they would withdraw support for current US policy immediately.

"The big evil for the IMF in Russia in 1998 was the prospect of the central bank funding government debt. The Fed is now even buying mortgage-backed securities," he noted.

"Even before the (Troubled Asset Relief Program) and the expansion of the Fed's balance sheet, total US public and private debt as a percentage of GDP in the US stood at 290 percent, that figure is now far higher," Wermuth added.

"US credit risk is huge and America has two options, either default or let the currency depreciate substantially against currencies such as the yuan and the rouble," he explained.

"Last night's news from the Fed simply creates the right conditions for dollar weakness and a reduction in US liabilities to foreign investors and governments," Wermuth said.

This is not an area where Europe should save money, cut farm subsidies and boost research please:

European Space Agency astronaut Christer Fuglesang does construction and maintenance work during a spacewalk outside the International Space Station in September 2009

www.wsj.com - Shrinking budgets and national rivalries increasingly are undermining European space programs, even as the U.S. seeks expanded partnerships for future manned exploration efforts.

Debates over financial commitments for space projects by individual countries—and the number of jobs they expect in return—have intensified as a result of the region's economic woes. Some governments are considering slashing next year's contributions to the European Space Agency by 20% or more, while Italy's top space official last month stressed that economics and return on investment are now primary factors in determining national funding levels.

Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA's director-general, predicts it probably will take the European Union until 2014 to substantially reorient its space priorities.

"There are some economic difficulties in all of our" participating countries, Mr. Dordain said in an interview last month, so Europe won't be able to fully respond to Washington's invitation to step up cooperative ventures until national budgets stabilize.

The lack of momentum is a dramatic shift from the situation two years ago, when politicians and senior executives at major European aerospace companies expressed confidence that the region was on the verge of establishing a strong, unified and ambitious space program.

Underscoring the importance of scientific, military and possibly manned European missions, the EU for the first time explicitly linked space efforts to broader diplomatic and foreign-policy goals.

Starting in 2008, the new aim was to launch Europe on a trajectory to become an equal partner with Washington and Moscow across the full range of space endeavors.

Since then, China, India and other countries have ratcheted up their own space ambitions.

But many European initiatives appear to be faltering, according to industry officials and analysts, due to a lack of will by the region's political leaders and budget problems squeezing a wide array of government programs.

Europe is estimated to spend less than $9 billion a year on civilian space projects. Roughly half goes to programs overseen by ESA, while the rest is spent on space programs run by individual countries. But the total is only a fraction of U.S. civilian and military space expenditures.

So far, critics contend Europe has failed to come up with a consensus around a coherent, long-term exploration plan. "I am sorry to say there is no visible and clearly articulated strategy," Francois Auque, who runs space businesses for European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co., the region's largest aerospace firm, said in an interview last month. "Space exploration is quite low in the European priorities."

In Britain, for example, where a newly created space agency opened its doors in April, industry officials had hoped to parlay that into sharply increased government funding for space. "We can make the cake much bigger, and everyone gets a bigger slice," according to Keith Mason, chairman of a government advisory board, who has advocated job growth in the space sector.

But in his first speech on space policy, David Willetts, the U.K. minister for universities and science, made it clear that public spending isn't going up.

During a panel discussion at the Farnborough International Airshow in July, Mr. Willetts said he couldn't support such a move because the government's "fiscal position is very tight" and other parts of his department are being asked for 25% cuts in spending.

Unlike in the U.S, European space officials are trying to save money by pushing the concept of combined satellite fleets providing various services—including monitoring orbiting debris—to both civilian and military users.

Separately, Europe is pressing ahead with construction of more than two dozen civilian earth-observation and environmental-monitoring satellites, the largest part of the space agency's budget.

Mr. Dordain also said there is strong U.S.-European agreement in at least one promising arena: potential robotic missions deep into the solar system.

"We have decided to use any opportunity to go to Mars together," he said.

But work on a new, pan-European spacecraft able to carry cargo and possibly crews to the international space station is barely inching along.

In addition, Mr. Auque pointed to what he described as a stalemate over designing a next-generation European heavy-lift rocket. The governments of Italy, France and Germany—which would bear the largest cost of such a program—haven't agreed on a "concrete budget" despite years of debate and don't appear to have "the impetus or the stamina" to finish the job, according to Mr. Auque.

Mr. Dordain disagrees, countering that work on the proposed new rocket is "a big development" that needs more technical and political debate.

Yet officials at his agency, which historically has been reluctant to commit to hefty operational costs, now worry about spending increases necessary to keep the international space station going past 2020.