Sour on Europe

By Robert Kahn – Today’s (May 15) Eurozone GDP numbers remind us that Europe remains in a grinding recession; a second-half recovery now looks to be a long shot at best.  The only bright spot comes elsewhere, with news of  a German labor deal that will raise engineering wages by nearly 6 percent over the next 20 months (rebalancing European demand and stimulating German consumption needs more of this).

Notably, the need for jobs dominates other issues on the economic agenda. The mood is particularly bleak in the periphery, reflecting those countries’ economic troubles. more> http://tinyurl.com/bsglppy

Related>

• Eurozone now in its longest recession, Graeme Wearden, guardian.co.uk
• What the euro has meant, Economist
• Europe’s irrelevant austerity debate, Daniel Gros, europeanvoice.com

Policy patience seen wearing thin as yen drops

By Vidya Ranganathan – The yen’s fall past 100 per dollar highlights growing concerns about ultra-loose monetary policy around the globe and raises the prospect that policymakers elsewhere may take action to protect their economies from a tide of hot money.

Fears that a global currency war is brewing were fueled when the Reserve Bank of Australia and Bank of Korea both cut interest rates this week, citing the strength of their currencies as one of the reasons to act.

New Zealand’s central bank confessed for only the second time since 1985 that it had intervened in currency markets. more> http://tinyurl.com/d2gqkoq

Related>

• Keep on, or enough already? Fed officials spar over QE3, Ann Saphir, Luciana Lopez and Jonathan Spicer, Reuters
• Bitcoin Is a Junk Currency, But It Lays the Foundation For Better Money, Nathan Lewis, Forbes

JPMorgan And The Death Of Corporate Reputation

BOOK REVIEW

The Death of Corporate Reputation: How Integrity Has Been Destroyed on Wall Street, Author: Jonathan Macey.

By Steve Denning – All the big financial firms like Goldman Sachs [GS], UBS [UBS], Citibank [C], Bank of America [BAC], and JPMorgan Chase, have settled cases involving not just shady practices like price gouging, gaming the system, toll collecting, zero-sum trading and excessive compensation but also illegal practices such price fixing of LIBOR, abuses in foreclosure, money laundering of drug dealers and terrorists, assisting tax evasion and misleading clients with worthless securities. The cases were settled for what is chump change to the banks, without admitting or denying wrongdoing.

Fixing the financial sector will always appear to be an impossible task if we frame it as one of regulators trying to control and contain the nefarious activities of the banks and the hedge funds. If the issues are seen in a broader context, and the activities of the banks are viewed as one aspect of the way in which the shareholder value notion has been devastating many sectors, then we could get to the root cause of the financial sector’s problem and figure out what would be involved in fixing it. more> http://tinyurl.com/clor8le

Related>

• The failure to prosecute corporate crime undermines U.S. justice, Russell Mokhiber, Reuters

German role in steering euro crisis could lead to disaster, warns expert

By Ian Traynor – Jürgen Habermas, the Frankfurt professor whose political thinking has helped shape Germany over the past 50 years, called for the EU to be turned into a supranational democracy and the eurozone to become a fully fledged political union, while lambasting the “technocratic” handling of the crisis by Brussels and European leaders.

“The German government holds the key to the fate of the European Union in its hands. The main question is whether Germany is not only in a position to take the initiative, but also whether it could have an interest in doing so,” he said. more> http://tinyurl.com/cjnf8ke

Europeans Are Thinking the Unthinkable: That Debt Defaults Might Make Sense

By Michael Sivy – None of the euro zone’s problems have gone away. Political crises beset France, Italy and Spain. Smaller countries, from Portugal to Cyprus, face even more pressing financial troubles. Germany grows less and less willing to foot the bill for bailouts.

There is, in fact, a historical case for tolerating default. Argentina suffered a financial crisis in 1999 that led to a period of high unemployment… more> http://tinyurl.com/c5rfxh3