European debt crisis Live: World markets slide as EU meeting stalls
• The FTSE 100 is down 3.5% below the 4,900 mark
• The Ecofin guys in Luxembourg have finished their morning, but still haven't made any decisions. George Osborne is with them now.
• Evangelos Venizelos, Greek finance minister, has flown home to Athens to tell his people that there is "no discussion about a default".
• Half a billion euros has been wiped off the market value of Franco-Belgian bank Dexia.
• Deutsche Bank, Germany's biggest bank, has issued a profits warning and announced plans for 500 job cuts.
3.36pm: Some more, meanwhile, from our man in Brussels, David Gow, who reports on a "bi-lateral" meeting between chancellor George Osborne and Internal Markets commissioner Michel Barnier.
The two have been discussing new rules to crack down on over-the-counter derivatives trading. The background to the story is here.
The cumbersome EU decision-making process is eased along by "bi-laterals" and George Osborne held a really long one with Michel Barnier, the internal market commissioner, over derivatives regulation. Half an hour is unusual for this kind of one-on-one chat.
They've been discussing a compromise text put forward by the Polish presidency but the Chancellor's real aim is to end Britain's isolation on the issue. He's been talking up how the UK's position is principled and in full compliance with that adopted by the G-20.
Barnier is suggesting that Osborne can see some of his objections to the proposal met in other pieces of legislation such as the review of the horribly-named markets in financial instruments directive (Mifid) – due out in a couple of weeks.
He's also got short shrift, apparently, with his argument that as 75% of EU derivatives trading is in the City the UK's view should carry the greatest weight. Most of those trades, EU officials say, is in euros. And Britain is trying to over-rule the powers of the new European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) as the main regulator.
3.24pm: US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is now giving testimony to a congressional Joint Economic Committee hearing.
My colleague Dominic Rushe is following Bernanke's remarks and says:
Bernanke's prepared testimony for the Joint Economic Committee of Congress is now up on the Fed's website. And the politicos are now making their opening statements. It looks like he will be quizzed on the impact of Europe's crisis. This is from his statement:
"Outside the United States, concerns about sovereign debt in Greece and other euro-zone countries, as well as about the sovereign debt exposures of the European banking system, have been a significant source of stress in global financial markets. European leaders are strongly committed to addressing these issues, but the need to obtain agreement among a large number of countries to put in place necessary backstops and to address the sources of the fiscal problems has slowed the process of finding solutions. It is difficult to judge how much these financial strains have affected U.S. economic activity thus far, but there seems little doubt that they have hurt household and business confidence, and that they pose ongoing risks to growth."
Bernanke's is clearly calling for more cooperation in the fractious US political scene too.
"Monetary policy can be a powerful tool, but it is not a panacea for the problems currently faced by the U.S. economy. Fostering healthy growth and job creation is a shared responsibility of all economic policymakers, in close cooperation with the private sector."
3.14pm: And just as the markets dip, some arguably better news for consumers: oil is now trading below $100 a barrel.
Brent Crude for November delivery is now at $99.25, down 2.4% on the day.
3.11pm: The FTSE 100 has taken another turn for the worse since the US markets opened - losing another 50 points to reach 4,868 at one stage.
A below-5,000 finish, the first of the year, is looking increasingly likely. The market is now down just under 3.5%
3.00pm: As predicted, the S&P 500 is now in bear market territory.
It is currently down to 1,084, which by my reckoning is an almost 21% fall from the year's high of 1,370.
The high was hit on May 2, and is an intra-day high rather than a closing price.
2.43pm: The other major lunchtime news was some comments on the proposed merger of Dexia's municipal lending arm with French state bank Caisse des Depots and Banque Postale.
The idea has been floating around for a week or more, so is hardly new, but the comments themselves are fresh.
Senator Phillipe Marini, a member of French President Nicholas Sarkozy's ruling party, said:
As far as I know the government has opened negotiations with the aim of a restructuring that would safeguard the financing of regional governments...As far as I know these talks are going well and should result in the creation of a lending entity for local governments under the aegis of the Caisse des Depots and the Banque Postale. It's still being negotiated but the finalisation seems very likely.
He added that: "The state is not planning to inject capital into this new entity."
Reuters is now also saying that Caisse des Depots (CDC) will present a plan to take over some of Dexia's assets "in the coming days", citing "a source close to CDC".
2.27pm: Hello everyone - this is Alex Hawkes taking over from Rupert Neate, who has left to write a story for the paper.
Let's start with some bad news - the US S&P 500 is set to enter bear market territory when it opens in five minutes or so.
The rule of thumb is that a 20% fall constitutes a bear market. The S&P 500 peaked this year at 1,370, and closed last night at 1,099. Stock index futures are predicting a small fall, taking us into bear market territory.
1.07pm: OK, time for a lunchtime re-cap
• The FTSE 100 is down 3.5% below the 4,900 mark
• The Ecofin guys in Luxembourg have finished their morning, but still haven't made any decisions. George Osborne is with them now.
• Evangelos Venizelos, Greek finance minister, has flown home to Athens to tell his people that there is "no discussion about a default".
• Half a billion euros has been wiped off the market value of Franco-Belgian bank Dexia.
• Deutsche Bank, Germany's biggest bank, has issued a profits warning and announced plans for 500 job cuts.
• S&P has warned: "the spectre of a double dip in Europe looms larger".
12.46pm: It looks like Venizelos has managed to dodge the protesters to hold a delayed press conference in Athens.
There is no discussion about a default. If state mechanisms do not work and if we do not have the national cohesion and solidarity that is required, obviously we may have problems with our 8.5% target. We will not need more measures, they are not needed, as long as we are consistent
He said Greece could wait until mid-November to receive its next tranche of EU/IMF aid, which Greek officials had earlier said they needed this month. The delay gives European officials more time to apply pressure on Greece to implement reforms.
12.12pm: Helena Smith, our reporter on the ground in Greece, has hot-footed it to an emergency press conference about the EU's decision to withhold aid til November.
Helena says it was meant to start before noon, but it's been delayed by finance ministry staff protesting in their offices.
The national economy ministry officials are now frantically looking for new place to hold it in. Decision has weighed heavily on Greek government and there's a huge sense of disappointment (tinged with hopelessness) that no doubt Evangelos Venizelos, Greek finance minister, will give voice to at the presser. It comes as unions step up their attacks and transport workers' protests ahead of general strike tomorrow.
11.58am: The French and Belgian governments have pledged to support Dexia as shares in the Franco-Belgian lender plunge. But, if it comes to a bailout there might be a bit of a problem: Dexia has more assets to guarantee than Belgium's annual GDP.
The shares have recovered slightly from -38% to -22%, but the plunge has wiped more than half a billion euros off the company's market value.
The Belgium government has sought to reassure shareholders that they won't lose their savings.
"We promised to all account holders and savers that they would not lose a eurocent in the crisis. There is no reason for that," Yves Leterme, Belgium's acting prime minister, said.
He said the Belgian government was "firmly committed" to helping Dexia without anyone losing out, adding that Belgian and French authorities were in discussions to see how they can "cooperate in solidarity as shareholders to lead Dexia through this tough time."
In a vaguely worded statement in the earlier, Dexia's board said it would resolve its "structural problems" but gave no details. There has been speculation the bank will be split up with support from the French and Belgian governments both of which have stakes in the bank following a 2008 bailout.
11.30am: "French finance minister says Dexia's balance sheet clean up is advanced, and situation is worsened by liquidity problems," reports Italian business reporter @FGoria on Twitter
11.05am: Deutsche Bank, Germany's biggest bank, has issued a profits warning and announced 500 job cuts.
In face of "ongoing market turbulence, our planned pre-tax target of €10bn from our core businesses is no longer achievable for 2011," the bank said in a statement.
The intensifying European sovereign debt crisis led to sustained uncertainties among market participants in the third quarter and thus to significantly reduced volumes and revenues.
In response to the significant and unabated slowdown in client activity, Deutsche Bank will consider additional cost controls beyond those already implemented" at its corporate and investment banking division. This will lead to a reduction in headcount by around 500 positions.
Josef Ackermann, Deutsche Bank CEO, said.
The bank wrote down a further €250m of its €1.15bn exposure to Greek debt.
Ackermann said most of the job cuts would not be in Germany, which suggests Deutsche Bank workers in London will face the axe.
The shares are down more than 6%.
10.45am: Unemployment in Spain rose by a further 95,800 to 4.22m in September. It is the biggest monthly increase since January.
Spain's finance minister, who's in Luxembourg for the ecofin crisis meeting, said the figures were worse than expected but said he was not going to change the country's recovery plan.
Spain's overall jobless rate, which is released separately, stands at just under 21%.
9.59am: David Gow, our man on the ground in Luxembourg, has spent the morning on the hunt for George Osborne, who slipped into the country unnoticed early this morning.
George Osborne has come here with two goals: prod the eurozone into more decisive action, including strengthening the banking sector, and play for time on proposals to regulate trading in over-the-counter derivatives.
The chancellor is, by all accounts, treading a very fine line – batting for British interests while the Tory Right bays for a referendum on exiting the EU entirely in Manchester and helping the eurozone to resolve its crisis without coming on as a hectoring, arrogant outsider armed with all the answers.
On another gloriously warm and sunny day, Osborne slipped into the converted retail distribution warehouse that serves as the venue in Europe's richest country and that has apparently been given a make-over costing hundreds of millions. But his aides and officials are discreetly lobbying in the shadows of the ecofin meeting of all 27 EU finance ministers.
The chancellor effectively backs the view of Christine Lagarde, IMF managing director and former French finmin, that Europe's banks need serious recapitalisation. She says this could be anything up to €300bn; he won't put a figure on it or indeed on what individual UK banks (RBS, Lloyds come to mind) might need.
It's an ultra-sensitive issue, notably in France – and one heightened by the broad hint dropped last night by Jean-Claude Juncker, eurogroup chairman, that private bondholders (i.e. Europe's banks) face a bigger haircut than the 21% agreed when the second bailout was initialled on 21 July.
In typically laconic, playful mood, Juncker said: "We have to take into account the fact that we have experienced changes since the decisions we took on 21 July so we are considering technical changes." But he would say no more – with a cruel smile.
So, it's unlikely Osborne will get completely visibility on the eurozone position in the run-up to the forthcoming G20 meeting of finance ministers in Paris. What he does want, however, is to make headway on Britain's stance that current EU plans to regulate OTC derivatives are too narrow (by excluding trades within exchanges) and don't match up to G20 standards. He's come here armed with a statement to that effect from the Financial Stability Board.
The UK is in a 26-1 minority on this issue so an immediate aim is to delay the adoption of a "common position" by the council of ministers – before launching into full-scale negotiations with the European parliament. Failing that, as with other financial sector regulation, the goal is to change the goalposts during the negotiations themselves. This is the EU so there's plenty of time ("this is just one staging post," in the words of one senior official).
Whether the niceties of this delicate negotiating stance are appreciated in Manchester is another matter.
9.42am: UK house-building in September dropped the most since December 2010, according to construction PMI data just released. The Markit/CPS index fell sharply to 50.1* in September from 52.6 in August.
Sarah Bingham, economist at Markit, says:
Activity growth slowed to near-stagnation, with constructors relying on work on existing contracts to support output. This therefore bodes ill for construction activity in the coming months. UK construction companies continued to struggle in the face of growing concerns about the wider economy, with weaker client confidence leading to a reduction in new business received during September.
*A reading above 50 indicates growth, below 50 means contraction.
9.14am: The FTSE 100 has now tumbled 130 points or 2.5% to 4,945 points.
The Euro Stoxx 50 volatility index – which is dubbed the eurozone's fear gauge – is up 8% to a three-week-high. The higher the index, which measures the number of deals, the lower the appetite for risk.
And, oh dear. Now emerging markets are falling too. The MSCI emerging equities index has dropped more than 2% today to its lowest point since September 2009, and it is now down 28% so far this year.
The flight to safe havens has pushed the dollar to a near-nine month high against a basket of currencies. The euro has fallen to $1.3145 – its weakest since January. And gold is up about 1%.
9.00am: Recession Alert:
The Standard & Poor's, the ratings agency that yesterday upheld the UK's AAA rating, has warned that "the spectre of a double dip in Europe looms larger".
As a result of market developments in recent weeks, Standard & Poor's has for the second time in five weeks revised downward its projections for economic growth in the region for the next five quarters. We now forecast GDP growth in the eurozone at 1.1% in 2012, compared with 1.5% in our earlier projection. For the U.K., we expect a GDP growth rate at 1.7% in 2012, slightly below our 1.8% projection in August.
"We still don't expect a genuine double dip to occur in the eurozone as a whole or in the U.K., but we recognize that the probability of another recession in Western Europe has continued to grow, said Jean-Michel Six, Standard & Poor's chief economist for Europe. "We now estimate the probability of a new recession in Western Europe next year at about 40%, although in our baseline forecast we continue to anticipate sluggish and unevenly distributed growth in the coming five quarters.
Business surveys from August and September point to a fresh deterioration in the business climate, visible not only in those economies typically most exposed to the sovereign crisis-such as Portugal, Spain, and Ireland-but also in the core countries of the eurozone and in the U.K.
8.29am: Today's agenda:
• Construction PMI data is due out at 9:30am BST
• Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank (ECB) is due to speak at 2pm BST
• Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Fed, will give testimony before the Joint Economic Committee in Washington at 3pm BST
• George Osborne will press Europe's economics ministers to bring a resolution to the eurozone debt crisis
8.23am: Dexia, the Franco-Belgian bank, has fallen 23% - on top of 10% on Monday. More details on Jill's blog.
"Top Belgian ministers are to meet later on Tuesday to discuss how to shield Dexia from collapse after the Franco-Belgian bank's board pleaded to local government for what amounts to a break-up of the specialist lender," the FT says
8.14am: David Cameron is on the Today Programme now listen on iPlayer or follow Andrew Sparrow's politics blog for up dates.
Cameron says too much of the last decade was based on "cheap and easy money" that wasn't good for everyone and, once again, promised a rebalancing of the economy.
8.06am: The FTSE 100 has opened down 70 points (1.3%) to 5,005 - just above the crucial 5,000 mark. Mostly state-owned Lloyds Banking Group is the biggest faller down 2.9%, Barclays is also off 2.7%. Only Tesco is in positive territory.
Other European markets are also falling with France's Cac off 1.6%, Spain's Ibex down 1.3%, Italy's FTSE Mib down 1.4% and Germany's Dax is down 1.7%. As expected the banks are being hardest hit with the Euro Stoxx 600 banking index down 1.9%.
7.52am: The FTSE 100 is expected to open 85 points lower at 4,989 at 8am following losses in Asian markets. Exchanges in Germany and France are trading 1.6-1.7% lower in pre-market dealing.
Banking stocks will be in focus again, particularly Dexia, the Franco-Belgian bank which suffered a 10% share price drop on Monday due to fears about its €4.8bn exposure to Greek debt. As my colleague Jill Treanor reported the bank's board was locked in crisis talks last night.
7.34 am: George Osborne will today call on European finance ministers to bring a quick and decisive end to the Greek crisis, which continues to dog world markets.
Osborne, who on Monday said resolving the eurozone crisis would be the "single biggest boost to confidence that could happen to the British economy", will tell fellow finance leaders in Luxembourg that they must figure out how to resolve the debt crisis as soon as possible.
My objective is clear. The eurozone's financial fund needs maximum firepower. The eurozone needs to strengthen its banks.
And the eurozone needs to end all the speculation, decide what they're going to do with Greece, and then stick to that decision.
The time to resolve the crisis is now. They've got to get out and fix their roof, even though it's already pouring with rain.
Osborne said at the Conservative Party conference yesterday, as he announced a "credit easing" programme to help small businesses
Eurozone finance ministers, who are nicknamed Ecofin, argued well into the evening last night but, once again, failed to come to any decisions. A plan to release of €8bn of aid to Greece in November appears to have been delayed by Athens' admission that it will not meet its deficit reduction targets.
European debt crisisGreeceGeorge OsborneFTSEMarket turmoilguardian.co.ukS&P 500 goes into bear market as US data adds to Greek concerns
Investors needed little excuse to sell off global markets, given the growing crisis in Greece, but some poor US figures have given them further reason.
New orders for US factory goods fell 0.2% in August compared to expectations of a flat outcome, compared to a 2.1% increase in July (even that was revised down from 2.4%).
So the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 200 points - or nearly 2% - while the S&P 500 is down a similar amount to 1075.08, putting it in bear market territory.
Meanwhile the FTSE 100 is down 170.15 at 4905.35, having hit 4868.6. From its recent peak in July, it would need to reach 4843 to be in a new bear market, that it, 20% from its high. If you take the April high, the figure would be 4865, and clearly it's come very close to that.
Meanwhile the oil price has fallen on concerns about a drop in demand in a severe economic downturn, with Brent crude now below $100 a barrel, down nearly 2.5%.
Nick Fletcherguardian.co.ukPremier League fans can buy cheap foreign TV coverage, EU rules
,BSkyB,Media,Football,Sport,Consumer+affairs+(Money),Money,Business,Premier+League+(Football),Household+bills,UK+news&c5=Personal+Finance,Not+commercially+useful,Business+Markets,Media+Weekly,Television+Media,Consumer+News,Premier+League&c6=Mark+Sweney&c7=11-Oct-04&c8=1642477&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Media&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU/Media/Sports+rights){kind=small}
• European Union's highest court rules it is not illegal for football fans to buy set-top box decoder cards from foreign broadcasters
• Ruling could have huge impact on the way BSkyB and other broadcasters buy rights to sport, movies and foreign TV shows
Football fans will potentially be able to watch cut-price Premier League matches, after the European Union's highest court ruled on Tuesday that it is not illegal for individuals to buy set-top box decoder cards from foreign broadcasters.
The European court of justice ruled that the FA Premier League cannot stop individuals from seeking better deals for TV sports subscriptions than that offered by BSkyB – which paid more than £1bn for the UK broadcast rights for Premier League matches – from foreign broadcasters.
The ECJ said attempting to prohibit the "import, sale or use of foreign decoder cards is contrary to the freedom to provide services and cannot be justified either in light of the objective of protecting intellectual property rights or by the objective of encouraging the public to attend football stadiums".
However, the court ruled against the bid by Karen Murphy, the landlady of the Red, White and Blue pub in Portsmouth, to be allowed to use a Greek decoder card to show live Premier League matches to pubgoers at much cheaper rates than BSkyB charges commercial premises in the UK on copyright grounds.
The ECJ said the transmission in a pub is a "communication to the public", which means that without the permission of the FA Premier League Murphy is in breach of the copyright directive. This directive would not stop individuals buying foreign decoder cards for domestic use.
However, the ECJ said live match coverage itself was not covered by copyright protection, although the Premier League could claim ownership of FAPL-branded opening video sequences, theme music, on-screen graphics and highlights of previous matches.
This means that as long as the FAPL and BSkyB ensure that match coverage includes enough copyright elements pubs will not be allowed to show foreign broadcasts.
The FA Premier League, which sells TV rights exclusively to broadcasters across Europe on a territory-by-territory basis, has been clamping down on British pubs buying in live coverage from foreign broadcasters.
The ECJ ruling could potentially have a huge impact on the way BSkyB and other UK and European broadcasters buy rights to sport, films and foreign TV shows. Sky's share price was down by just over 3% to 635.50p at about 9.20am on Tuesday, as the City reacted to the European ruling.
BSkyB makes about £200m a year in revenue from selling subscriptions to pubs and other commercial premises.
The broadcaster has about 44,000 pub, club and office subscribers. it is thought that pub owners like Murphy pay about £1,000 a month for a BSkyB subscription. Murphy slashed these costs by buying a Greek decoder card and a subscription to Nova reportedly at a cost of about £800 a year.
"This is a clear statement from Europe that intellectual property rights cannot be relied upon to fragment the market and charge different prices in different EU countries for the same content," said Toby Headdon, an intellectual property lawyer at Berwin Leighton Paisner. "The decision looks set to change the licensing landscape in Europe, not just for football broadcasts but potentially for other content such as films and music."
The ECJ also opened the door for the dismantling of the FAPL's country-specific sports rights regime, stating that such a system of selling matches to broadcasters is "irreconcilable" with the aim of EU law to create one internal market.
"Payment by the television stations of a premium in order to ensure themselves absolute territorial exclusivity goes beyond what is necessary to ensure the right holders appropriate remuneration," the ECJ said in its ruling. "Such a practice may result in artificial price differences between the partitioned national markets. Such partitioning and such an artificial price difference are irreconcilable with the fundamental aim of the treaty, which is completion of the internal market."
The ruling could force the FAPL to look to sell its broadcast rights as a pan-European TV deal, most probably to Sky, although it could look to limit sales to some European markets.
The Premier League will make more than £1.6bn in the UK from its current three-year deal with BSkyB and has a separate deal in this country for live match coverage with ESPN, along with a highlights deal with the BBC for Match of the Day.
The Premier League is believed to have made well in excess of £1bn in TV deals outside the UK for rights covering 2010 to 2013, almost double the £625m made under the previous deal period, with the popularity of the top English division booming in territories including the Middle East, north Africa, Hong Kong and Singapore.
No figures are given for Europe, but it is understood that France, Scandinavia and Germany are the most lucrative markets for Premier League rights.
The UK high court of justice will now make the final decision applying this ruling to the actual case of Karen Murphy, but the ECJ's decision is final and cannot be appealed against.
Europe's commissioner for the digital agenda, Neelie Kroes, vowed to sort out confusion surrounding cross-border access to film, music and pay-per-view football games.
In a speech prepared before the verdict backing Murphy, she told a thinktank audience that "invisible barriers" remained in the distance-selling of "digital goods".
She went on: "If I can buy a music CD online from a company in the Netherlands and have it posted to me here in Belgium, why can't I buy a digital download from the same company?
"If I can watch my local team's football matches using online pay-per-view in one member state, why not in 27?
"This situation does not make much sense to the man on the street. To be honest, it is not a situation that makes much sense to me. And we need to fix it."
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Sports rightsTelevision industryBSkyBConsumer affairsPremier LeagueHousehold billsMark Sweneyguardian.co.ukFrom the archive, 4 October 1969: Nothing to lose but the Post Office Guide
Originally published in the Guardian on 4 October 1969
Just a day or so ago the Post Office stopped being a nationalised industry and became a public corporation. The contemporary man in the street appears little moved by it. As far as he can see the main part of his mail will still be made up of bills, and the slowest queue at the counter will continue to be the one he has just joined. The trouble is of course that his view of the Post Office is altogether too subjective. He doesn't really know enough about it – except at those points where it touches him directly. One of the main advantages of its new status must surely be to give it greater freedom, to make it more flexible and less hidebound by rules and regulations. But how many people are aware of what these rules and regulations are? How can they hail the dawn of freedom when they are not aware of having been captive?
Captives they were nonetheless, and the prison regulations – the things the GPO would not allow them to do – make up a hefty red volume called the Post Office Guide. Open it anywhere, and the list of thou shalts and thou shalt nots makes the laws of the Medes look like the rules of "Snap."
Take the list of articles which cannot be admitted under the printed paper regulations. It begins "coupons, cards, forms and so on bearing written answers to acrostics . . . and communications indicating by means of words, letters, marks or numbers, moves in a game of chess."
It goes on to forbid "diaries for shorter periods than a year" together with cloth, metal, asbestos, leather, and blotting paper, except for a single unfolded flat sheet of blotting paper bearing a printed advertisement not related to blotting paper.
What possible harm could two old chess players do to anyone if they chose to play a postal game through the exchange of small oblongs of marked asbestos? And if blotting paper happens to be my business, why shouldn't I send out free samples overprinted with an 11-month diary – and some written answers to acrostics too? No wonder initiative and enterprise languish in this land.
Rules, restrictions, regulations; we have all been hedged about with them at every turn. Now we must hope that the new Post Office Corporation is going to set us free. But how will we know? Well I for one am going to have my Christmas cards printed on leather this year with folded blotting paper inserts across which I shall scrawl the five words "Down with the Post Office tyranny." If my friends don't have to pay excess charges I will know that the new era has dawned.
Harry Whewell
Post Officeguardian.co.ukConservative conference 2011: hitting rock bottom – video
John Harris roadtests George Osborne's prescriptions for economic salvation on the residents of Ramsbottom, in the key marginal seat of Bury North
John HarrisElliot SmithDavid Cameron: UK economic growth not as fast as I would like
Prime minister says government needs to make it easier for people to start and expand businesses
Follow all the latest Tory conference news on our live blog
David Cameron has admitted that economic growth in the UK is not as fast as he would like it to be.
He told Sky News the UK was facing difficult times and said it was important not to talk the country down, pointing to measures being discussed at the Tory party conference to help boost growth in the private sector.
"Of course it [economic growth] is not as fast as it was forecast to be or as fast as I would like it to be," the prime minister said in an interview on the Adam Boulton & Co show.
"The growth has to come from the private sector in our economy. We can't go on growing the government, we need jobs to come from private business. We have to make it easier for people to start businesses, to grow businesses and to expand and employ people."
He added: "Even if you take the period since the election … it has involved difficulty for family budgets, but there are 300,000 more private sector jobs. We have seen big growth in exports for instance – 40% up to China. What we now need to do is build on that and make it go further and faster."
Earlier in the day, Cameron hit out at proposals by Ed Miliband to introduce differential tax rates for good and bad businesses, saying that was a point at which his financial ideas went "off the rails".
The prime minister made his comments after being asked about the Labour leader's keynote speech in Liverpool last week. Miliband called for an end to the "something for nothing" culture and promised to regulate and tax companies according to whether they invested for the long term or went for the fast buck.
Cameron told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the call for an end to the "something for nothing" culture was something he had been encouraging for the past five years as Tory leader. He agreed that the state had a role in setting the right rules to encourage moral behaviour, citing the coalition's welfare reforms.
But he dismissed the suggestion of applying different tax rates for different businesses according to how they behave.
"Where I think Ed goes off the rails is the idea that the chancellor of the exchequer can sit there and say there is one tax rate for this company and another tax rate for that company," he said.
"It is completely impractical – and that is why the business response to the Labour conference was so negative, because they thought: 'Heavens above, we are trying to grow an economy and get more people working and we need investment and jobs. What on earth is this guy talking about?'"
Cameron insisted business ethics and behaviour had improved a huge amount. "What used to be a fringe concern about corporate social responsibility is now absolutely mainstream, and businesses and people really care about it," he said.
Asked about excesses at the top, Cameron said he did not believe the government should intervene to stop bonuses or put a cap on pay in the banking sector.
"On the question of bonuses, if there is a bank entirely in the private sector, I want to see responsible behaviour and I want to see us regulating properly – but we can't determine the pay structure in every single organisation. That wouldn't be the right thing to do," he said.
He said the government was following its mantra that "we are all in this together" in paying down the deficit and said he wanted to build an economy that works for everyone.
"I don't accept this is a government that has one rule at the top and one rule at the bottom," he said. "We are absolutely asking people at the top of our society to be responsible and we are completely dissatisfied about the way the banking industry behaved over the last decade."
In a separate interview with Radio 5 Live, Cameron backed his chancellor's stance on tax policing.
"I thought it was a very powerful bit of George Osborne's speech yesterday when he said: 'To rich people and also rich companies that are avoiding tax, we will come after you and get the money' … we are changing the rules and cracking down on tax evasion. Then we are getting people to obey the rules. We have just done a tax treaty with Switzerland."
As Osborne flies out to Luxembourg to meet EU finance ministers, Cameron said it was good that Britain was outside the euro but there was a real need to help the eurozone get its act together, citing the export business on which Britain depends.
The eurozone crisis was holding back the entire world economy, Britain included, he said, arguing for further integration to ensure the countries with the single currency worked more closely together.
He said those countries outside the euro, like Britain, would need certain safeguards to make sure what the eurozone countries are agreeing separatelydid not adversely affect the single market.
"This is not some naïve view [that] they go off on their own and we sit back intensely relaxed about it," he added. "There are safeguards we will need."
The third day of the Tory conference will feature speeches from the home secretary, Theresa May, the justice secretary, Ken Clarke, and the immigration minister, Damian Green.
May will tell the conference that immigration laws will be toughened to prevent foreign criminals using human rights arguments to escape deportation from the UK.
In an announcement likely to delight delegates, she will blame lax laws for a number of controversial cases in which courts have ruled that killers and rapists could remain in Britain.
Their right to a family life – enshrined in the Human Rights Act – has too often been put before the need to control immigration and protect the public, she will say.
May is expected to reiterate her wish to see the Human Rights Act scrapped. While the future of the legislation remains under review, actions such as hardening the immigration rules would help end what Cameron this week called the "chilling culture" the legislation fosters.
But a Liberal Democrat activist present at the Tory conference said May's attempts to prevent misuse of the act was an empty gesture as the right to family life was based on a convention from Brussels, not London.
Evan Harris, a former MP, told Sky: "It's not that it really means anything, but no one is allowed to say that here.
"You get released on a convention that we can't resile from and we shouldn't resile from. We wouldn't expect British citizens to have their rights ignored in Greece, or any other part of Europe, and we shouldn't expect the same here."
Conservative conference 2011David CameronTax and spendingConservative conferenceConservativesEd MilibandCorporate governanceTaxTax avoidanceEconomic policyHélène Mulhollandguardian.co.ukOrthodox church appears to be exempt from austerity measures
Property tax levied across Greece will not apply to the church, whose financial status is coming under closer scrutiny as debt crisis continues
The Greek church and its monasteries will not have to pay the deeply unpopular property tax that the government introduced in September in an effort to fulfil Greece's austerity targets. "The church will be taxed on any assets used for business purposes," a finance ministry spokesman said after news of the tax caused an outcry.
Places of worship and charitable organisations will be exempt from the tax. But the borderline is fuzzy and the accounts of the Orthodox church are opaque. Church "institutions are governed by public law, which gives them substantial fiscal advantages. They must publish their accounts, but generally don't," says Isabelle Depret, a religious studies specialist at the Free University of Brussels.
Church funds are taboo in Greece. "Its income is liable to taxation, but there are two major stumbling blocks," says Polikarpos Karamouzis, who is a professor of the sociology of religion at the Aegean University in Rhodes. "There is no accounting system to detail its actual income and no one really knows quite how much land it owns because there is no land register." This situation suits both the church and the state, "because politicians are reluctant to upset the Orthodox authorities", says Stefanos Manos, an independent MP and one of the few policymakers to have demanded separation of church and state.
"The Greek church is a national church," Karamouzis says, "which means there is a political connection between the church and the state, for the state awarded it these privileges. Its spiritual role is closely linked to its political function, muddying the distinction between its congregation and Greek citizens, a source of confusion which politicians use in their quest for votes."
Priests influence public opinion so politicians would rather not upset them. In 2010 the Holy Synod, a committee of 13 bishops, published a text circulated to all parishes condemning the "troika" – representatives of the International Monetary Fund, the European commission and the European Central Bank – as a "foreign occupation" force.
"The government takes lots of precautions before inventing taxes for the church or for shipowners, but workers and pensioners must pay up without anyone asking their opinion," says the leader of the far-left party Syriza, Alexis Tsipras. He favours disestablishment.
The Orthodox church is a constituent part of the Greek nation: the constitution is written in "the name of the consubstantial and indivisible Holy Trinity"; priests bless the start of each school year and new governments; state schools teach Christian principles; and people of all ages make the sign of the cross when they pass a church.
In March 2010 the Socialist government of George Papandreou decided to tax the church, with a 20% levy on business revenue and 5% to 10% on donations. The 10,000 priests and bishops are paid by the state, which costs €220m ($295m) a year. The previous finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, tried to reduce the state's share, but the moment news of this leaked, the government changed its mind. The present finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, is close to the church and against the idea.
The public outcry when it emerged that the church would not be paying the property tax forced the church to publish details of how much tax it does pay. The church claims to have paid €2.5m in property and corporation tax for 2010; it mentioned that it owns 30 properties in Athens (six of them unoccupied) and 14 in Thessaloniki.
When the issue of church property is raised – as it increasingly is – the archbishop of Athens, Hieronymus – the supreme Orthodox authority in Greece – says that the church's riches are a myth. Only 4% of the assets owned before the Greek revolution of 1821 remain, and the state has confiscated much of its property. "There is no comparison between the riches of the Greek church and those of its Italian or Spanish counterpart. Public buildings have been raised on church land, but it receives no compensation," says the bishopric's spokesman, Vassilios Meichanetsidis.
According to the right-of-centre daily Kathimerini newspaper, the church was worth €700m in 2008. Manos, a former finance minister, reckons the figure is at least €1bn. The €2.5m in tax paid is slight in comparison to these unconfirmed figures. But this is only part of what the church owns, in the care of the central administration. It does not take into account the many parishes, some of which are very rich, nor property under the direct ownership of Greece's 80 bishoprics, which enjoy considerable independence. It also overlooks the wealth of 450 monasteries, some of which are affiliated to the church, others not (those on Mount Athos, for example, have a separate status). The Orthodox Patriarchs of Constantinople, Jerusalem and Alexandria all own property in Greece. "Greece is staring at a pile of money and everyone is behaving as if it was invisible," says author Vassilis Alexakis, who has written a caustic novel about Mount Athos in French.
The church is the second-largest landowner in Greece, after the state, with about 130,000 hectares. "It's forest, not building land," Meichanetsidis says. But it includes blocks of flats in fashionable areas of Athens and seaside suburbs to the south.
The church holds a 1.5% share in the National Bank of Greece, with a seat on the board, occupied by the bishop of Ioannina, Theoklitos, who was paid €24,000 in fees in 2008, according to Forbes.com. He opposed an increase in church taxes. "We refuse to foot the bill for other people's mistakes," he said. Only two bishops have offered to give up their €2,200 salary.
Even undeveloped land has business potential. The monks of the richly endowed Pentelli monastery, north of Athens, are looking for investors prepared to put €1bn into a solar farm on their mountain side. This is part of the church's new strategy of capitalising on its assets to fund charitable organisations. Last year it spent more than €100m on such operations, the scope of which has expanded with the financial crisis. "In Athens we are serving 10,000 to 12,000 meals a day," says Meichanetsidis. This article originally appeared in Le Monde
GreeceReligionEuropean debt crisisEuropean Central BankWorld BankIMFEuropean commissionguardian.co.ukOccupy Wall Street ends capitalism’s alibi | Richard Wolff
This protest pinpoints how dysfunctional our economic system is: we must refashion it for human needs, not corporate aims
Occupy Wall Street has already weathered the usual early storms. The kept media ignored the protest, but that failed to end it. The partisans of inequality mocked it, but that failed to end it. The police servants of the status quo over-reacted and that failed to end it – indeed, it fueled the fire. And millions looking on said, "Wow!" And now, ever more people are organising local, parallel demonstrations – from Boston to San Francisco and many places between.
Let me urge the occupiers to ignore the usual carping that besets powerful social movements in their earliest phases. Yes, you could be better organised, your demands more focused, your priorities clearer. All true, but in this moment, mostly irrelevant. Here is the key: if we want a mass and deep-rooted social movement of the left to re-emerge and transform the United States, we must welcome the many different streams, needs, desires, goals, energies and enthusiasms that inspire and sustain social movements. Now is the time to invite, welcome and gather them, in all their profusion and confusion.
The next step – and we are not there yet – will be to fashion the program and the organisation to realise it. It's fine to talk about that now, to propose, debate and argue. But it is foolish and self-defeating to compromise achieving inclusive growth – now within our reach – for the sake of program and organisation. The history of the US left is littered with such programs and organisations without a mass movement behind them or at their core.
So permit me, in the spirit of honoring and contributing something to this historic movement, to propose yet another dimension, another item to add to your agenda for social change. To achieve the goals of this renewed movement, we must finally change the organisation of production that sustains and reproduces inequality and injustice. We need to replace the failed structure of our corporate enterprises that now deliver profits to so few, pollute the environment we all depend on, and corrupt our political system.
We need to end stock markets and boards of directors. The capacity to produce the goods and services we need should belong to everyone – just like the air, water, healthcare, education and security on which we likewise depend. We need to bring democracy to our enterprises. The workers within and the communities around enterprises can and should collectively shape how work is organised, what gets produced, and how we make use of the fruits of our collective efforts.
If we believe democracy is the best way to govern our residential communities, then it likewise deserves to govern our workplaces. Democracy at work is a goal that can help build this movement.
We all know that moving in this direction will elicit the screams of "socialism" from the usual predictable corners. The tired rhetoric lives on long after the cold war that orchestrated it fades out of memory. The audience for that rhetoric is fast fading, too. It is long overdue in the US for us to have a genuine conversation and struggle over our current economic system. Capitalism has gotten a free pass for far too long.
We take pride in questioning, challenging, criticising and debating our health, education, military, transportation and other basic social institutions. We argue whether their current structures and functioning serve our needs. We work our way to changing them so they perform better. And so it should be.
Yet, for decades now, we have failed to similarly question, challenge, criticise and debate our economic system: capitalism. Because a taboo protected capitalism, cheerleading and celebrating it became obligatory. Criticism and questions got banished as heresy, disloyalty or worse. Behind the protective taboo, capitalism degenerated into the ineffective, unequal, crisis-ridden social disaster we all now bear.
Capitalism is the problem – and the joblessness, homelessness, insecurity, and austerity it now imposes everywhere are the costs we bear. We have the people, the skills and the tools to produce the goods and services needed for a just society to prosper. We just need to reorganise our producing units differently, to go beyond a capitalist economic system that no longer serves our needs.
Humanity learned to do without kings and emperors and slave masters. We found our way to a democratic alternative, however partial and unfinished the democratic project remains. We can now take the next step to realise that democratic project. We can bring democracy to our enterprises – by transforming them into cooperatives owned, operated and governed by democratic assemblies composed of all who work in them and all the residents of the communities who are interdependent with them.
Let me conclude by offering a slogan: "The US can do better than corporate capitalism." Let that be an idea and a debate that this renewed movement can engage. Doing so would give an immense gift to the US and the world. It would break through the taboo, finally subjecting capitalism to the critiques and debates it has evaded for far too long – and at far too great a cost to all of us.
•is participating in a day-long teach-in at the Occupy Wall Street protest in Zuccotti Park, New York on Tuesday 4 October. This article is based on remarks he will be addressing there at 6pm local time
Occupy Wall StreetNew YorkUS politicsUnited StatesUS unemployment and employment dataFinancial crisisGlobal recessionUS economic growth and recessionPovertyRichard Wolffguardian.co.ukPremier League rights judgment is a win-win for football’s ruling classes | Dan Sabbagh
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Landmark European court decision will keep lawyers busy but it won't make much difference to consumers
So, it's a lose-lose said the European court of justice. This is not how either football matches (win-lose) or the business of football (win-win) normally turns out. Astonishingly, the court delivered a hammer blow to the notion that Premier League and other sports rights can be sold on a country-by-country basis, saying such a situation is "contrary to EU law".
The Premier League has just lost the basis upon which it, and every other sports body, has operated for years. But the ruling is not just about sport: it could affect the way all television programmes are sold across Europe – films, TV shows and the rest.
The short term result for consumers is that we will sneak out and buy a foreign satellite decoder card, then watch Premier League games in Greek, or better still with the sound down and Radio 5 Live or TalkSport turned up.
Except that some viewers have been doing that for years – on a recent trip to France I found myself cheerfully watching Sky. The owners of the property, also Brits, said they got a Sky subscription on the basis that they had a UK address. Nobody seemed to be checking too hard.
Bear in mind, however, that the Premier League and Sky are smart: they will be more careful how they license games overseas, or perhaps the League will license the rights to Sky for the whole of Europe and take it from there.
What you can be sure of is that there are lot of lawyers working hard to preserve the lucrative status quo, not just in football, but across all sports rights, and indeed in every single TV property that is sold across borders. That's why Sky shares only fell by 3% on Tuesday morning: it's a bad result for Sky in the UK, but it is unlikely to be catastrophic as the company is too smart to be undone in one courtroom. And don't be surprised if, despite all today's dramatic talk, individual pay-TV subscribers don't benefit much from lower prices – unless we all get a yen (so to speak) for Greek television.
There was one other loser on Tuesday: Karen Murphy, the Portsmouth publican who started the case. Tired of the high prices Sky charges pubs and clubs, she went off and bought the original Greek satellite decoder card that caused all the trouble in the first place.
Unfortunately, the court held that pubs – who are in effect trying to profit from getting cheaper foreign decoder cards – can't benefit. That's because she was breaching the copyright of the Premier League, not by showing live coverage of the football match itself, but by broadcasting the Premier League's logo or anthem without permission.
The sanguine Premier League is already noting that it will be easy to stop publicans using its footage without permission by ensuring that its logo is on screen all the time, or its theme music played every time a replay is aired.
So the only real beneficiaries are those prepared to buy a European satellite service and decoder card and watch whatever sport they can see; in practice the kind of thing immigrant communities have been doing for years.
One suspects that few of the rest of us will bother – and the lucrative Premier League and the Sky division of the Murdoch empire can rest easy. Which means that for all the talk of lose-lose, it is the established powers of football that will win.
Sports rightsBSkyBTelevision industryPremier LeagueMedia lawDan Sabbaghguardian.co.uk
The EU’s Premier League rights ruling explained
How the verdict will impact on the football fans, BSkyB, film studios and homegrown TV production companies
How did we get here?Tuesday's judgment marks the latest – and most significant step – in a long-running saga that began when the Premier League took legal action against a number of pubs that were showing live football on a Saturday afternoon by beaming it in from overseas. One landlady, Karen Murphy from the Red, White and Blue pub in Portsmouth, and two importers of the supposedly illicit decoder cards took their appeal to Europe. Murphy's lawyers argued she was entitled to show the matches because they had paid a subscription to a Greek broadcaster and that to enforce Sky's exclusivity in the UK was against European free trade laws.
What does Tuesday's verdict mean?Essentially, that the ECJ largely agreed with Murphy. It ruled that the imposition of national borders to sell rights on a territory-by-territory basis contravened EU laws on free trade. This could potentially have huge implications not only for the Premier League's rights model, which has driven its huge revenue growth over the past 20 years to the point where it now brings in £3.5bn over three years, but also for every other sports body and content producer in Europe. Kudos, the producer of Spooks and Life on Mars, has already warned it could affect investment in British television production if they are unable to sell their shows abroad on a territory-by-territory basis.
What does it mean for the Premier League?Premier League insiders are convinced that they can mitigate the damage. Even if it ultimately means they have to sell fewer matches on a pan-European basis to more than one broadcaster, they are confident they will be able to largely maintain the value of the rights deals that have underpinned the explosion in players wages over recent years. Only around £350m-£400m of the Premier League's £3.5bn income comes from continental Europe. They are also closely examining the copyright issues raised by the judgment (see below) to work out how they could use them to their advantage.
What does it mean today?That, for the duration of the existing Premier League contract (which runs until the end of next season), private individuals will be able to purchase set-top boxes and decoder cards that allow them to beam in football from overseas more cheaply. As such, the 3pm blackout that stops domestic broadcasters from showing matches at the traditional time on a Saturday afternoon will become redundant – for the time being at least. There are different copyright issues around showing matches in pubs, but it appears individual consumers will be free to buy in football from overseas using foreign cards and decoders. For the next 18 months, at least, there could be something of a free for all as consumers work out to get their hands on cheaper football – and more of it. Albeit in a different language. However, Premier League insiders believe that the full judgment may call even this interpretation into question.
There are also obvious benefits for ex-pats in that they will be able to take their set-top box and decoder card with them when they travel to a different country and watch their existing package of channels. Yet the landscape could look very different by the time the Premier League goes to market with its next TV deal.
What will it mean in future?It could result in a pan-European market for rights as sports bodies seek to mitigate the impact of the ruling. That could be more problematic for the likes of Uefa (who rely on extracting maximum value from every local market) than the Premier League (which are keen, above all, to protect their domestic revenue). There are also major issues for everyone from pay-TV giants from BSkyB to Hollywood film studios and homegrown TV production companies.
Did it all go Murphy's way?No, far from it. In a potentially significant move the ECJ also ruled that while beaming in the matches themselves from overseas did not breach the Premier League's copyright, broadcasting the Premier League's "anthem" (can anybody hum it?), graphics and build up without its permission did amount to a breach. Those annoying pre-match Premier League and Champions League anthems and rituals that you thought were just designed to build the atmosphere? Turns out they were brand protection tools.
How could rights holders use this to their advantage?It's early days, but one obvious route for rights holders would be to force their TV partners to include more copyrighted elements throughout the broadcast – playing music when goals are scored, for example, or mandating specific graphics throughout the broadcast. In this way, the Premier League and other rights holders could help protect their business in pubs and clubs.
What about other sports bodies?The issues for, say, Uefa are more complex – and potentially more damaging – still. It makes its money by extracting the maximum value from each local market for Champions League rights. Therefore it probably wouldn't make economic sense to sell on a pan-European basis. It will have to work out if the potential impact on rights values (caused by consumers potentially buying cheaper from abroad) is greater than the hit they will take if they sell pan-European.
What does it mean for Sky?Analysts believe the impact on Sky's business is unlikely to be significant. In reality, they think it unlikely that a flood of subscribers will cancel their contracts in order to swap their Sky box for a Greek one. However, if Sky was forced to go down the route of buying the rights on a pan-European basis and potentially sub-licensing some of them in certain territories – while also ensuring that none of those licensees could undercut it – it would make its business model significantly more complicated. But it should also be noted that the Premier League and Sky have survived a series of regulatory challenges to their symbiotic relationship over the past two decades and none have dented their mutually dependent growth.
What happens next?The ECJ judgment is passing back down to the UK high court for interpretation by Lord Kitchen, which could take another four or five months. In the full ruling, there is enough ambiguity to keep the lawyers busy for months to come. Meanwhile, the Premier League has to work out whether to go to market with its next TV rights deal from 2013-14 onwards amid the fog of uncertainty.
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