Italian bank accepts cheese as loan collateral; U.S. banks should watch and learn

Imagine this: You live in Castelfranco Emilia, a small town in northern Italy, and you want a loan for $9,000. So you walk into the bank and the manager says: "OK, how many wheels of Parmesan cheese do you have for collateral?" You answer, "I have three wheels." (Each wheel is worth $3,000.) "Fine, we'll take your three wheels as collateral for your loan," he says and draws up the contract.

THIS CHEESE is a bit smelly ...

Posted: 11:48:33 AM  

Since 1 January 2009, Roland Gilles, Director General of the National Gendarmerie, is the new President of the CIMIN.
The European Gendarmerie Force (EGF) conducted its third command post exercise (CPX), in order to test the capacity of the EGF PHQ in planning and conducting an international crisis management operation (ICMO) under the umbrella (Umbr) of the European Union (EU) within a military chain of command (MCC).
The exercise (EGF-E) was based on the training assumption that the EGF PHQ is called to plan and conduct the initial deployment (intDept) of a Force HQ (FHQ) and to support an EGF mission.
In this exercise, due to a realistic ambition level (RAL), a deployment was foreseen following EGF Operational Concept (OC) in a non-benign Operational Theatre (OT).

GendFor's LOGO explained by GendFor

'Lex paciferat' - explained by Ironies Too

Posted: 6:18:55 AM  

The soon-to-be prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes that "a national emergency" such as Israel's involvement in a major war would help him in his frantic attempts to form a new ruling coalition.

Read that again?!?!

Israel, believed to be the only possessor of a nuclear arsenal in the Middle East, describes Iran's nuclear activities as a threat to its existence.

Read that again ?!?!

Posted: 6:12:33 AM  

"We've seen some progress in the financial markets, absolutely," Bernanke said. "But until we get that stabilized and working normally, we're not going to see recovery.

"But we do have a plan. We're working on it. And, I do think that we will get it stabilized, and we'll see the recession coming to an end probably this year."

Even if the recession, which began in December 2007, ends this year, the unemployment rate will keep climbing past the current quarter-century high of 8.1 percent, Bernanke said.

I decided to PICK A DATE - 12th of December 2007 (numerology) - C L I C K H E R E

Posted: 5:53:15 AM