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Lord Coe has defended London 2012's decision to sign a sponsorship deal with the Dow Chemical Company, despite renewed protests from campaign groups and MPs who claim it has outstanding liabilities relating to the 1984 Bhopal gas leak disaster. Appearing before the culture, media and sport select committee, 传奇私服 传世私服 Coe said he had met concerned politicians including Keith Vaz and Tessa Jowell, the shadow Olympics minister who remains on the London 2012 board. Responding to suggestions that the Games could face a boycott from Indian athletes over the issue, Coe insisted he had not heard anything to that effect from the Indian Olympic Committee, with which he had been in dialogue. MPs, Indian athletes and other groups launched a campaign on Tuesday aimed at convincing Locog to change its mind. The campaign is being co-ordinated by the MP Barry Gardiner, chair of the Labour Friends of India group. Campaigners including Amnesty International and the Bhopal Medical Appeal claim that Dow Chemical continues to face outstanding lawsuits relating to the 1984 tragedy. Louise Mensch, the Conservative MP who is a member of the committee, said it was "very worrying" that London 2012 was associating itself with Dow Chemical and Coe said that the London organising committee had looked at the issue "very carefully". He said that the disaster had happened under the previous owners of the plant and that the Indian supreme court had upheld an earlier damages award in 1999 and 2009 to settle the liabilities from the explosion. According to campaigners, more than 120,000 people still suffer from ailments caused by the accident and subsequent pollution of the plant site. "They are a global partner of the IOC, they are within our 传奇sf nfl jerseys cheap territory able to associate with the London Games and they are sponsoring the [stadium] wrap. It is worth remembering that in the comprehensive spending review that funding for the wrap was withdrawn." Dow signed a deal with the IOC in 2010 to become a global Olympic sponsor and this summer agreed a deal with Locog to pay for the unbranded fabric wrap that will surround the stadium. Funding for the £7m wrap, which was to have been met from the Olympic Delivery Authority's budget, was removed in last year's CSR process as a concession to cost-cutting within the overall £9.3bn public funding package. "I am aware of the size and scale. I am the grandson of an Indian so I'm not completely unaware of this as an issue. But I am satisfied that at no time did Dow operate, own or were involved with the plant at the time of the disaster or the time of the full and final settlement," said Coe. Mensch said that selecting Dow as the sponsor of the 1km wrap appeared to be at odds with Locog's stated values. "On the three points that you raise – environmental, ethical and social – they met by some distance every one of those requirements in that process," said Coe. Asked by the MP Steve Rotheram whether Dow could be replaced if the company did the "honourable thing" and withdrew from sponsoring the wrap, the Locog chief executive, Paul Deighton, Chicago Cubs Jerseys Chicago White Sox Jerseys said it was "getting very late" to do so and had no indication that the company would pull out. Coe said he was "satisfied with the process and satisfied with the history". Dow said it was "proud" to sponsor the IOC, pointing out that its relationship with the Olympics dated back to 1980, and to support Locog's plans for the stadium wrap. "Regarding Bhopal, the 1984 Union Carbide Bhopal incident was a terrible tragedy that none of us in the industry will ever forget. However, it is disappointing that some people are trying to assign blame and responsibility to Dow," the company said. "Dow never owned or operated the facility in Bhopal. Dow acquired the shares of Union Carbide Corporation more than 16 years after the tragedy, and 10 years after the $470m settlement agreement – paid by Union Carbide Corporation and Union Carbide India, Limited – was approved by the Indian Supreme Court. The settlement agreement has been reviewed twice and again upheld by the Supreme Court of India in 1991 and 2007." It added: "Today, the state government of Madhya Pradesh owns and controls the site and is in the best position, and has the authority under the direction of the courts, to complete whatever remediation may be necessary and to make the right decisions for Bhopal."

Patrice Evra has been informed that he may have difficulty proving he was the victim of racial abuse from Luis Suárez, because of a counter-argument that certain variations of the N-word are not deemed 传奇私服 传世私服 offensive where the Liverpool player grew up, in Uruguay. The Manchester United defender has accused Suárez of using racist language during a 1-1 draw at Anfield on 15 October and is waiting to discover whether, almost a month later, the Football Association will charge the Liverpool striker with misconduct. Top-level sources at Old Trafford say the offending word was uttered in Spanish and allegedly was a derivative of "negro", with Evra stating that it was used "at least 10 times". However, Suárez has categorically denied racially abusing the Senegal‑born France player and the FA's investigators are having to consider the different context with which words that would be considered 传奇sf nfl jerseys cheap offensive in England are commonly used in Uruguay and other Spanish-speaking countries. "Negrito", for example, could have shocking connotations for someone without full knowledge of the nuances of the language. But the counter-argument is that this is one of several derivations that are used in many countries, with no derogatory meaning – often in the same way someone could be called "pal" or " mate". An illustration of this comes in the form of the message Dani Pacheco, the Liverpool player who is currently on loan at Rayo Vallecano, sent to his Spain Under-21 team-mate Thiago Alcântara via Twitter on Friday. It begins: "Negrito, enjoy yourself …" This was a conversation between two friends. In Uruguay, it is quite common for commentators to use the same word to describe Premier League players. Visitors to the country can be taken aback by this form of language. But other derivatives are also commonly used, often to describe people of all races in affectionate terms, including family members. Whether Evra was aware of these nuances at the time is not clear, but he and United have subsequently been informed that the case does not merely rest on what Suárez said but also, crucially, the context in which his words were used. The two players were arguing at the time and it is beyond argument that Suárez was trying to wind up his opponent, but the crux of the matter is the meaning of whatever was said and differentiating between something that would not be offensive in one country but shocking in another. Suárez, backed by Liverpool, has repeatedly protested his innocence. The forward, who scored all four goals as Uruguay beat Chile 4-0 on Friday, has not publicly disclosed the words he used. He said last week that it was not an insult but just a "way of expressing myself. I called him something his team-mates at Manchester call him, and even they were surprised by his reaction." The complexities of a difficult, highly sensitive case help to explain why the FA has taken so long to decide whether to take action against Suárez. The player's poor grasp of English has also contributed, as Chicago Cubs Jerseys Chicago White Sox Jerseys all his interviews have been in Spanish, requiring careful translation. Any case against him would also have to prove that, having played in Europe since 2006, he should be aware of what is acceptable or not. However, this would be a difficult task. If Suárez accepts he used one of the N‑words, he would have the scope to argue it is a common and inoffensive term for someone of his background, citing a clash of language and culture between one player from South America and Europe. Liverpool have let it be known they will ask the FA to take action against Evra if the governing body concludes that Suárez has no case to answer. However, the latest revelations throw up the possibility that both players have given a legitimate account of what happened, rather than it being a case of one man's word against another. Kenny Dalglish, the Liverpool manager, has voiced his objections about the length of time the case is taking the FA, but it is still not clear when an announcement will be made. The case is so complex it may be that the FA needs to take advice from South America about the relevant linguistic issues before deciding whether or not to proceed any further.

Mike Tindall warned Twickenham on Friday night that he would not allow them to end his England career without a fight and will appeal against the decision to fine him £25,000 and throw him out of the Elite 传奇私服 传世私服 Player Squad. In a two-sentence statement the players' union, the Rugby Players Association, said it had "noted the extraordinary fine handed down following the disciplinary process after the Rugby World Cup. Mike will be appealing [against] this unprecedented fine as per the terms of the EPS [elite player squad] agreement." Earlier, in a statement which administered a further buffeting to Martin Johnson's tenure as England manager, the Rugby Football Union branded Tindall's conduct in New Zealand as unacceptable in a senior England player and in breach of the tour agreement signed before the World Cup. The RFU's professional rugby director, Rob Andrew, and the legal and governance director, Karena Vleck, had taken evidence about the 33-year-old's behaviour with a blonde in the now infamous Altitude Bar in Queenstown the day after England's opening match against Argentina. Tindall was Johnson's captain in that game and the manager's credibility is further damaged by £5,000 fines, suspended for a year, imposed on James Haskell and Chris Ashton, for behaviour involving a hotel worker in Dunedin. A fourth player, Dylan Hartley, the Northampton captain, was cleared of being involved with Haskell and Ashton but Friday's ruling compounded Johnson's difficulties on the field after he had gone on record as saying he trusted his players, intended to treat them as grown-ups and would not employ curfews or any other restrictions on their movements. Andrew is also reviewing England's performance in New Zealand before reporting to the Professional Game Board, which will decide whether Johnson should keep his job, if he wishes to. So far Johnson has not told Twickenham whether he wants to stay on and is known to have been particularly hurt by Tindall's behaviour and the need to stand by his vice-captain and fellow World Cup winner from 2003 when it became clear that the Gloucester player had not told the whole story. Tindall, who has 75 caps, initially said that he had returned 传奇sf nfl jerseys cheap to the team hotel after leaving the Altitude bar but changed his story when further footage emerged of him at another bar later in the evening. Johnson defended Tindall, saying that the player had made an "innocent mistake", but it transpired that the blonde was a former girlfriend from Tindall's time at Bath. In a strong statement, Andrew said: "Mike Tindall's actions reached a level of misconduct that was unacceptable in a senior England player and amounted to a very serious breach of the EPS code of conduct. While we acknowledge his previous good character, it needs to be made clear that what he did will not be tolerated. "Regarding the events in Dunedin, it should be stressed that the allegations of very serious wrongdoing made against Chris Ashton, Dylan Hartley and James Haskell by Annabel Newton, a member of staff at the team hotel, were entirely false. We do not believe the players had any intention to sexually harass or intimidate Ms Newton. However, the incident is precisely the kind of dangerous, compromising situation the players were warned about prior to departure for New Zealand and that they were specifically told to avoid in the EPS code of conduct." "Rugby player drinks beer shocker" was how Johnson initially greeted inquiries when the Queenstown news broke but, after the mayhem of the past few weeks, Twickenham has found an issue into which it can get its teeth, even if another of Tindall's former team-mates is less than impressed. Austin Healey, once of Leicester and now of ESPN, accused Chicago Cubs Jerseys Chicago White Sox Jerseys Andrew of self-interest. Healey tweeted: "25k fine is wrong. Tindall has been made a scapegoat.. he set bad example but ... Andrew trying to justify his position." England's exit in the quarter-finals was their worst World Cup performance in 12 years but it was being let down by his players which has angered Johnson most, particularly when one of them – Tindall – had only just married the Queen's granddaughter at a ceremony attended by a large number of England players and coaches. There is also the issue of players ignoring repeated warnings after the experiences of 2008, when four of the England squad were accused of rape after a night in an Auckland bar. An inquiry cleared all four but threw up grounds to suggest that England players in particular were at risk, as Jonny Wilkinson suggested on Friday. "I think there's always going to be people out there to get you and make things worse for you," said England's fly-half, who described Tindall as "a great, great guy and player". Andrew's words were in marked contrast to a more relaxed approach in 2008 when, although the squad was selected by Johnson, Andrew managed the tour in his absence. However, with no one's job currently safe at Twickenham, the call for more discipline is understandable. "These episodes and the subsequent disciplinary action should stand as a strong reminder that the highest standards of personal conduct are expected from any England player on and off the field," said Andrew. Haskell and Ashton have until Tuesday to appeal. Representatives of Haskell declined to comment.

Newcastle United's hopes of raising £8m-10m a year in new income from their stadium naming rights are highly unlikely to be realised because the plan breaks the "golden rules" of a successful sponsorship property, 传奇私服 传世私服 industry experts have warned. Newcastle are third in the Premier League after an 11-match unbeaten start to the season and announced on Wednesday that St James' Park is to be renamed the Sports Direct Arena. Derek Llambias, the club's managing director, said : "I would hope to generate between £8m-10m a year, that will give us another player." It was, in the eyes of sponsorship consultants, the worst possible thing he could have said. Shaun Whatling, the chief executive of the management and brand consultancy company Red Mandarin, cast doubt on Llambias's forecasts, saying: "They're unwise to raise expectations of £10m incremental revenue and creating linkage with new signings – there's already antagonism amongst fans to the sale of naming rights and Derek Llambias is now preparing a frosty welcome for any sponsor buying in 'on the cheap'." Tim Crow, the chief executive at the sponsorship consultancy Synergy, believes the best way to avoid the risk of brand damage for interested sponsors would be to stay away. "I'd be very surprised if any brand came forward and if any of my clients asked me for my opinion I'd advise them in the strongest possible terms not to," said Crow. "Or they could do the shirt sponsorship on its own, which would be entirely positive." Crow has devised six "golden rules" for a successful naming-rights proposition and it is clear the latest development breaches them. His advice is never to rename an existing stadium with a strong heritage and, 119 years after the club first played football there, St James' Park certainly qualifies as that. The exception, Crow has written, is when stadium operators rebuild or relaunch an unloved or decrepit stadium, when a sponsor's cash provides tangible improvements to the facility. This happened at the Millennium Dome (now the O2) and Dublin's Lansdowne Road (now the Aviva Stadium). But at Newcastle, a wholly owned subsidiary of the retailer Sports Direct, 传奇sf nfl jerseys cheap the extra money would go towards players; the likely net effect being only that the unloved parent company is spared the expense. "They've driven a cart and horses through the golden rules," said Crow, who described the stadium's former incarnation as SportsDirect.com@St James' Park as "a horror". Andy Westlake is the chief executive of the sponsorship and management firm Fast Track and advises clients including Emirates, which signed a successful shirt and stadium deal with Arsenal in 2004. The deal was worth £6.5m a year in shirt sponsorship and only about £2.75m in naming rights. Those were more buoyant economic times but Arsenal discounted the sponsorship value to receive cash up front, without which their new home could not have been built. Manchester City's £200m-plus, 10-year deal with Etihad bucked a declining trend in naming-rights values but the relationship between Abu Dhabi's national flag-carrier airline and its Premier League proxy may have distorted the value of that contract. Westlake cannot see Newcastle achieving anything like that amount. "I don't think any brand will be buying in to naming rights at Newcastle unless they are focusing on building a relationship with fans," said Westlake. With Mike Ashley trending on Twitter on Thursday in a far from complimentary context, that is unlikely. "In this [recessionary] market you have to recognise what sponsorship is about: adding value for fans in the club they love," added Westlake. "But Newcastle fans are universally against this. Perhaps he's[Ashley] is generating the wrath so that a brand coming in can restore the St James' Park name and be loved for it. Otherwise, I can't explain it." Joey Barton, who left Newcastle in August to join QPR, thinks Chicago Cubs Jerseys Chicago White Sox Jerseys he can. "Ashley and his subordinates, know the cost of everything but the value of nothing…" he tweeted. "N#numpties."

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Joe Paterno’s head coaching career at Penn State began on Sept. 17, 1966 with a win over Maryland, and it ended Wednesday night, at the end of an extraordinary day, in the middle of an emotionally wrenching week, with a telephone call from the heads of the school’s Board of Trustees. They informed Paterno, the iconic face of this storied football 传奇私服 传世私服 program, that he was being dismissed three games shy of the end of his 46th season. John P. Surma, the vice chairman of the board, delivered the news before a packed news conference at a hotel on the outskirts of town just after 10 p.m., with an audible gasp and several shrieks going up from the mixture of local and national media members and curious onlookers. “Joe Paterno,” Surma said, “is no longer the head football coach, effective immediately.” With that, the child sex-abuse scandal surrounding a longtime Paterno lieutenant reached its emotional peak on this badly shaken campus of 40,000 undergraduates, in a village known as Happy Valley. “Right now, I'm not the football coach,” Paterno said in a brief statement released after the board’s decision, “and that's something I have to get used to.” The board also voted to oust university president Graham B. Spanier, bringing to four the number of administrators, including Paterno, who have lost their jobs over the burgeoning scandal — in which Jerry Sandusky, Penn State’s longtime defensive coordinator, was arrested on charges of molesting at least eight boys between 1994 and 2009. But it was the dismissal of the 84-year-old Paterno, who earlier in 传奇sf nfl jerseys cheap the day had announced his intention to resign at the end of this season, that threatened to bring the campus to a boiling point. As students and alumni took to Twitter to plead with other students and Paterno supporters not to riot, reports were already surfacing of mobs of people amassing downtown, tearing down lamp posts. Another crowd, more somber and silent, gathered outside Paterno’s modest, one-story rancher home just off-campus. A man sometimes referred to only half-jokingly as the most important man in Pennsylvania, a winner of an NCAA-record 409 games and two national titles, Paterno — known affectionately as “Joe Pa” — had seen throughout college athletics as a titan and throughout the state as untouchable. While the rest of the world wondered what took Penn State so long in firing the man who presided over the tarnished program, Penn State supporters wondered why Paterno couldn’t at least be allowed to say goodbye Saturday at the Nittany Lions’ final home game of the season, against Nebraska. “I hesitate to use the word ‘godlike,’ because it’s a little strong, Chicago Cubs Jerseys Chicago White Sox Jerseys but he really is a mythical figure around here,” said Ben Jones, a Penn State student who covers the football team for the blog BlackShoeDiaries.com. “It’s hard to explain to people who don’t live here just how beloved he is.” Surma, seated at a table in a hotel ballroom, with board chairman Steve Garban beside him and 20 trustees seated behind him, gave no firm reasons for Paterno’s dismissal, despite pointed and passionate grilling from media members — in a manner that blurred the line between journalist and fan — saying repeatedly that the board felt it “was necessary to make a change in leadership and set a course in a new direction.”

LAS VEGAS — Las Vegas poker professional Ben Lamb was eliminated from the World Series of Poker main event Tuesday night in four hands — leaving Pius Heinz of Germany and Martin Staszko of the Czech Republic in a prolonged battle for the $8.72 million title. Lamb pushed all-in on the first hand of play with a king-jack, 传奇私服 传世私服 hoping to induce Staszko to fold pocket sevens. But Staszko called and kept his marginal advantage as the five community cards were dealt. “I got the sense he wasn’t like super strong, but he actually was stronger than I thought he was,” Lamb said. That left Lamb very short on chips, and he pushed all-in again three hands later with a queen-six. This time, Staszko had pocket jacks and eliminated Lamb. “I wanted to come in aggressive, and I did,” Lamb said. “Every poker player dreams of having the year I had, so I don’t want to sit here and have people like cry for me,” he said. “I’ll be OK.” The 26-year-old Lamb won $4 million for finishing in third place. The hands pushed Staszko to a chip lead over Heinz. Heinz, 22, of Cologne, Germany, and the 35-year-old Staszko of Trinec, Czech Republic, were each guaranteed a payday of at least $5.43 million. Heinz led at the start with just over half the chips in play, but Staszko quickly took that lead away as the players began trading chips. There were eight lead changes over the first three hours of play, the eighth coming just after a break when Staszko responded to a 20 million chip bet from Heinz by announcing a re-raise. Heinz immediately folded. Staszko at one point had a 2-1 chip advantage, but that was gone within minutes. Staszko regained the lead before a break in play, and had about 60 percent of all the chips in play after five hours, excluding breaks. Each player must lose all his chips to be eliminated from the no-limit 传奇sf nfl jerseys cheap Texas Hold ‘em tournament, and win all the chips in play to take the crown. Heinz, who said he had a rough six-month run in poker before the series and was thinking about whether to go back to college, aggressively stormed from seventh in chips to first at the nine-hand final table on Sunday. He went from 16.4 million in chips to 107.8 million in just more than 7½ hours of play, propelling to a higher finish than at least six of his competitors. Lamb, an experienced professional who made his mark at the 58-tournament series this year by winning Player of the Year honors, had a large contingent of rowdy supporters and a smaller group of friends and poker experts feeding him information about his play and his opponents. He didn’t last long Tuesday night. For the first time, every hand at the final table was playing out nearly live on ESPN, including tense stretches of several minutes during which players mulled difficult decisions. The play was being aired on a 15-minute delay with hole cards Chicago Cubs Jerseys Chicago White Sox Jerseys revealed once hands ended — enough time to ensure gambling regulators that players couldn’t cheat. Staszko said it was an element that wouldn’t affect play too much — the game had already changed with three players left compared with nine, he said.

Portsmouth are close to naming West Brom assistant head coach Michael Appleton as their new manager with the two clubs continuing talks on Monday. Baggies manager Roy Hodgson confirmed at the weekend that 传奇私服 传世私服 discussions remain ongoing between the clubs. And Hodgson says Appleton deserves his chance as a manager after a successful coaching career at the Hawthorns. "He is ready for a top job and when he gets it I think he will make a big success of it," he told BBC WM. Portsmouth have been searching for a new manager since Steve Cotterill left for Nottingham Forest last month. Several people are believed to have been interviewed including former 传奇sf nfl jerseys cheap Reading manager Steve Coppell and Doncaster boss Sean O'Driscoll, but it appears Pompey have decided to go for Appleton. "Michael is an excellent young coach and we at West Brom have to accept there are clubs out there who know their business and will target him," added Hodgson. "There are some discussions still to be had, but if it works out that Portsmouth do want him and he wants to go then all we can do is bemoan the fact it is a great loss for us and congratulate Portsmouth on appointing an excellent manager." Appleton, 35, initially joined West Brom as a player in 2001, having began his career at Manchester United. He also had spells at Lincoln, Grimsby and Preston but was forced to retire from football because of a knee injury in 2003. In June 2005, Appleton announced that he was going to sue the surgeon that he believed had ended his career early. He later received damages. He has been at West Brom for over 10 years and has had a variety of coaching roles at the Hawthorns. In February, Appleton was placed in temporary charge of first-team Chicago Cubs Jerseys Chicago White Sox Jerseys affairs after the board placed Roberto di Matteo on gardening leave. Hodgson says Appleton's departure is not yet a done deal, but he does not anticipate any problems in him moving to Fratton Park. "It will be up to the two clubs to decide how much compensation is required and I don't envisage any problems in that respect as long as Michael himself wants to take up the challenge," added Hodgson.

European efforts to solve a growing sovereign debt crisis have failed to quell market unease on the Continent, and the skepticism over Greece points to continued volatility this week. Among fresh warning signs, Italy’s cost of borrowing has jumped to the highest rate since the country adopted the euro. Others signs include pressures building in the plumbing of Europe’s banking system. nhl jerseys 传奇私服 While those pressures are not yet at the levels experienced during the 2008 financial crisis, when some markets in the United States froze altogether, they are high enough to cause worry, analysts say. Even as Greece reached an agreement on Sunday to form a coalition government meant to avert the collapse of the latest bailout plan for the euro zone, investors are still demanding greater certainty on how Europe would pay for a rescue package aimed at stopping the Greek financial contagion from spreading to Italy or Spain. “This is a bit of a sideshow,” Mark D. Luschini, chief strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott, said of the shifting political leadership in Greece. “Markets will react favorably to this, but they won’t rally hard on the news. Italy is the bigger issue.” In the United States, credit markets tightened earlier this year during a political stand-off over the debt ceiling and the ratings downgrade of the country’s long-term debt by Standard & Poor’s, but conditions have eased since then. European banks are likely to remain wary about lending to one another, analysts predict, and investors will continue to require high interest rates on the billions of euros in loans Italy needs each month to keep its economy afloat. The yield on 10-year Italian notes has surpassed that on Spanish debt, reaching 6.35 percent on Friday after leaders at a meeting of the Group of 20 nations failed to come up with details on how to stop the European crisis from spreading. The rising yield is troubling because once the interest rates on the debt of the bailed out countries Greece and Portugal surpassed 7 percent they shot up far higher, requiring those countries to turn to outside sources of financing. Rates on their debt remain in double digits. At the end of last month, Italy issued 3 billion euros worth of bonds at an interest rate of more than 6 percent, about 1.5 percentage points higher than it had had to pay as recently as the summer. The extra bond yields are adding as much as 3 billion euros (about $4.1 billion ) annually in additional interest payments, estimates Tobias Blattner, a former economist at the European Central Bank who is an economist at Daiwa Securities in London. Analysts are concerned that if interest rates on Italian debt keep wholesale mlb jerseys nfl jerseys cheap rising, the country may no longer be able to afford to borrow on the open markets and instead would have to turn to official lenders like the European Union or the International Monetary Fund. The latest rate “is a warning,” said Mark McCormick, currency strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman. “Seven percent would be a point of no return.” The European Central Bank is providing another gauge of European stress — the amount of sovereign bonds it is now buying on an almost daily basis. The central bank is trying to provide a market for the debt of countries like Italy and keep interest rates from rising to punishing levels. This year, the amount of sovereign debt held by the central bank has more than doubled, to over 150 billion euros. Many analysts say they think the bank would have to buy bonds on a much larger scale to stop interest rates from creeping higher, let alone drive yields substantially lower. European banks, worried about each others’ exposure to bad debts, have demanded an increasingly higher interest rate to lend euros to one another. The rate, measured by a gauge called Euribor-OIS, was 20 basis points as recently as June, but has since jumped to 90 to 100 basis points. (A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.) The current Chicago Cubs Jerseys Chicago White Sox Jerseys rate, however, is still far below levels in 2008 and 2009 during the financial crisis, when it reached more than 2 percent. Since May, sources of dollars have also been drying up, as United States money market funds have pulled back from buying the short-term debt of European banks.

WASHINGTON — With Greece struggling to form a government that can force harsh austerity measures onto a weary public, Europe is in usual form, taking a couple of steps toward solving its fiscal crisis and then a couple of steps backward. Washington, meanwhile, is hoping that the latest deficit-reduction committee in Congress can succeed nhl jerseys 传奇私服 where others have failed. This cycle of bureaucracy and gridlock has been repeating itself for months now. It is tempting to blame feckless politicians on both sides of the Atlantic, and that would not be entirely wrong. But the frailty of politicians is not the full story. The fact is that most of the industrialized world — Europe, the United States, Japan, too — is in a difficult economic bind. There are no simple solutions that would quickly win the approval of citizens if only politicians were willing to try them. Most voters in these places have yet to come to grips with the notion that they have promised themselves benefits that, at current tax rates, they cannot afford. Their economies have been growing too slowly, for too long, to pay for the coming bulge of retirees. “The U.S. and Europe have to make hard choices because of two things: slower growth and aging populations,” said Barry Eichengreen, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “Europe’s choices wholesale mlb jerseys nfl jerseys cheap are even harder than America’s, because the prospects for growth are more dubious.” By the end of last week, as the Greek Parliament took a big step toward approving a European deal to reduce the country’s debt, some reasons for hope had emerged. Yet the main dynamic had not changed. Europe still has not set aside enough money to cover its debts, with Italy now presenting the most immediate problems, many economists say. In the United States, a special Congressional deficit committee appears to be making little progress, and some members of Congress have even begun talking about undoing the automatic Pentagon cuts set to take place if the committee deadlocks. On the most basic level, affluent countries are facing sharply increasing claims on their resources even as those resources are growing less quickly than they once were. The increasing claims come from the aging of the population, while the slowing growth of available resources comes from a slowdown of economic expansion over the last generation. A complex mix of factors, varying by country, has slowed growth, and the slowdown has been exacerbated everywhere by the worst financial crisis and global recession in 70 years. The combination has left Europe and the United States with frustrated populations that still have more sacrifices ahead. “These are very difficult moral issues,” said Benjamin Friedman, an economic historian at Harvard. “We are really talking about the level at which we support the elderly retired population.” As Simon Tilford, chief economist of the Center for European Reform, a Chicago Cubs Jerseys Chicago White Sox Jerseys research group in London, said, “Countries will face tougher choices.” In the United States, the debates center on whether to let government grow as the population ages and whether the affluent, who have done very well in recent decades, should pay more taxes. In Europe, the issues revolve around whether to shrink government, which is bigger than it is here, and whether well-off northern countries like Germany should support poorer countries, like Greece and Italy, which also suffer from fiscal irresponsibility. Everywhere, though, the debate is about much more than just partisan advantage or the next election. It is a philosophical debate. “The country’s in such bad shape, and people wish Congress would do something about it,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said in an interview last week. “And we have a big difference of opinion about what ought to be done.” He added, “That is what we do here — we have big debates about the future of the country.” Of course, politicians have also exposed themselves to legitimate criticism. Mr. McConnell and his fellow Republicans have blocked a short-term jobs bill proposed by President Obama that has broad support from independent economists, and for the most part they have failed to level with voters about cuts to Medicare, Social Security and the military that a no-new-taxes pledge would require. Democrats, including Mr. Obama, have vowed not to raise taxes on households making less than $250,000, which seems impossible without larger benefit cuts than Democrats have acknowledged. Polls, however, suggest that there is little political advantage in explaining the reality of future budget math. “Everybody thinks, ‘My taxes are going to fund somebody else’s social programs,’ ” Mr. Eichengreen said, “making people even more resistant to solutions.” Playing to those sentiments, the presidential contenders in the United States and France seem unlikely to force austerity upon angry voters. The United States and Europe still have more than enough resources to solve their problems. They are among the richest societies the world has ever known, benefiting from skilled work forces, the rule of law and political freedoms that often help produce economic innovations. The United States also continues to benefit from low interest rates, a signal of the bond market’s confidence. Yet the United States and Europe face the risk that their problems will feed on each other. Recent economic stagnation may make voters and policy makers unwilling to make hard choices, and the political paralysis might then worsen the economy by creating new financial turmoil. In an article in the current issue of the journal The National Interest, Mr. Friedman named this problem the “no-growth trap.” In the short term, this trap takes the form of resistance to emergency measures, like Germany’s distaste at bailing out more profligate countries, which may increase deficits. “The central paradox of financial crises,” Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, said before leaving for the Group of 20 meetings in Europe last week, “is that what feels just and fair is the opposite of what’s required for a just and fair outcome.” Longer term, the trap is created by resistance to the higher taxes and reduced benefits necessary to return countries to financial stability. The resistance is understandable, given how weak income growth has been in the past decade, but it is not sustainable. With Europe facing a series of debt decisions in the coming weeks and the Congressional deficit committee closing in on its Nov. 23 deadline, it is tempting to predict that policy makers will have to start making some big decisions soon. Then again, if history is a guide, they may well find ways to put off those decisions yet again.

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