Links: 2013-04-09
News links for 9 Apr 2013
Greek Bank Merger Halted – WSJ.com
“Greece’s two largest lenders are heading for state control after their merger was halted by the government over the weekend.”
Slovenia Bailout Signaled by Worsening Debt Swaps: Euro Credit – Bloomberg
“Slovenia’s creditworthiness is deteriorating at the fastest pace in the world after Cyprus as investors speculate a banking crisis will force it to follow the island nation and become the sixth euro country to need aid.
Credit-default swaps insuring Slovenian debt for five years soared as much as 66 percent to a six-month high of 414 basis points on March 28 from 250 on March 15, the last trading day before Cyprus announced plans for its rescue. It’s now up 34 percent at 336 basis points, compared with a 45 percent increase for Cyprus and 18 percent for Portugal in the period.”
Smog dents Beijing’s expat appeal – FT.com
“Air pollution has always been bad in China’s megacities but in recent months in north China readings of the most harmful types of toxic smog have reached 40 times the level recommended by the World Health Organisation.
More importantly, real-time information is now available that allows anyone with a computer or smartphone to match hard data with the choking clouds that they can see and smell in front of them.”
SPIEGEL Interview With SPD Candidate Peer Steinbrück – SPIEGEL ONLINE
“In an interview with SPIEGEL, Peer Steinbrück, the 66-year-old Social Democrat German chancellor candidate, says Chancellor Angela Merkel’s strict focus on austerity in the debt crisis has been wrong. He also vows to crack down on tax evaders and raise taxes on high earners.”
BBC News – German economic output ‘at near stagnation’
“The Markit composite purchasing managers’ index (PMI), which measures both the manufacturing and services sectors, declined to 50.6 in Germany last month, from 53.3 in February.
Any figure above 50 indicates growth.
France’s reading fell to 41.9 points, its worst since March 2009.”
Fitch downgrades China’s credit rating – FT.com
“China’s sovereign credit rating has been cut by Fitch, which warned that the world’s second-largest economy faces a bumpy road ahead as it seeks to change its growth model.
Fitch on Wednesday downgraded the country’s long-term local currency rating from AA- to A+, citing a number of “underlying structural weaknesses” in the Chinese economy, including low average incomes, lagging standards of governance, and a rapid expansion of credit.”
Spanish bankruptcies hit record in first quarter of 2013 | Reuters
“The 2,564 firms filing for insolvency proceedings in first three months of the year was a 10 percent rise from the previous quarter and a 45 percent increase on the same period in 2012, the survey by credit rating agency Axesor said.”
Mobile app downloads grow 11% in Q1 2013, revenues hit $2.2B
“The overall app market for smartphones and tablets grew to $2.2 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2013, according to new figures out from Canalys.”
Plenty of Things to Worry About in China, Bird Flu Is Not One | Daily Ticker – Yahoo! Finance
“Avian flu aside, there are plenty of real concerns Pettis is watching when it comes to China’s economy.
“I don’t think it’s either averting a disaster or heading for one,” Pettis says. “What I think we’re going to have is a decade or more of much, much lower growth.” Here’s what he’s keeping his eye on”
Get your free bank deposit insurance here | FT Alphaville
“That’s from a Promontory affiliate company called the Promontory Interfinancial Network. CDARS stands for Certificate of Deposit Account Registry Service. The service it offers is to ensure that large bank deposits are insured by the US government even though they are over and above the regular FDIC $250,000 limit.
It does this by breaking a large deposit up into chunks and then sharing these out among a network of partner banks, while the despositor — an individual or a corporate — has just one relationship, with CDARS.
It’s completely legal and, of course, it is something the depositor could do for themselves by sharing their cash out across a range of banks.
But it is nevertheless a service that hands federal deposit insurance to people and companies it is not meant to cover.”
U.K. Housing Market, Retail Sales Pick Up – WSJ.com
“Activity in the U.K.’s housing market and on the high street picked up in March despite unseasonably cold weather, surveys showed on Tuesday, giving the economic outlook a boost for the first quarter and suggesting the U.K. may avoid a triple-dip recession.
Real-estate activity increased in March, with the number of residential property sales rising to 17.4 per estate agency from 16.8 in February, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ monthly house price survey showed. The number is the highest in three years.”
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative: We’re free up here too, eh?
“the American myth of opportunity is just that, a myth – there is less social mobility in the US than in a number of other countries.
This is why I start fuming when people start talking about freedom. It’s how people live their lives that matters, not abstract ideology.”
Nikkei Touches New Multiyear High – WSJ.com
“Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average rose to a fresh multi-year high in early trading, touching its highest level since August 12, 2008. The index ended flat at 13,192.35.
“Strong trending moves in Japan’s stock market and currency have brought these markets right into focus as a sentiment driver for regional markets,” Ric Spooner, Chief Market Analyst at CMC Markets said in a note to clients. “The recent strong stock market moves have increased the potential for sharp sell offs on disappointing news.””
How Margaret Thatcher Changed Britain : The New Yorker
“Ed Miliband, the current leader of the Labour Party, offered a more carefully-crafted statement:
She will be remembered as a unique figure. She reshaped the politics of a whole generation. She was Britain’s first woman prime minister. She moved the center ground of British politics and was a huge figure on the world stage. The Labour Party disagreed with much of what she did, and she will always remain a controversial figure. But we can disagree and also greatly respect her political achievements and her personal strength.
Like every contemporary British politician, Miliband has to calibrate his message for a social, economic, and political constellation that Mrs. Thatcher did much to fashion. And even now that she’s gone, she can’t be ignored.”
I am become Ron Johnson, Destroyer of Worlds | The Reformed Broker
“JC Penney surprised The Street and the entire retail industry tonight with the sacking of Ron Johnson, during whose brief tenure on top roughly a billion dollars and several decades worth of customer goodwill had been exploded into the aether, like an old stadium wired with dynamite and blown to bits.
This was demolition work, they may as well have sent wrecking balls careening toward the stores themselves.
But let’s keep it real…
First, JC Penney’s sucked before he got there too – the choice was to hire a revolutionary guy to make big changes or just allow nature to take its course for another ten years until the company was finished anyway.”
Samsung Galaxy Mega specs emerge, stretch definition of ‘portable’ | News | TechRadar
“The Galaxy Mega 5.8 (codenamed GT-I9152) specs come from SamMobile, which claimed today to have received a specs sheet for the phablet.
According to the site, the Galaxy Mega 5.8 will be a dual SIM smartphone with Android 4.1 or 4.2: Jelly Bean and a 5.8-inch 960 x 540 display, 2- and 8-megapixel front and back cameras, 1.5GB of memory, a 2,600 mAh battery, and a 1.4GHz processor.
Those internals will reportedly be housed in a 164mm x 83.8mm x 9.7mm chassis, slightly bigger than the Galaxy Note 2 (keep in mind, the Mega 6.3 may have appeared first as what we thought was a 6.3-inch Galaxy Note 3).”
“The 17-member Fairsearch.org coalition, which includes Microsoft, Nokia, Oracle, TripAdvisor and Expedia, said that Google “uses deceptive conduct to lockout competition in mobile.”
The organization complains that Google gives away Android for free but then forces those that want its maps or YouTube or the Google Play store to then preload other Google services.”
Borrowing costs plunge as 10-year bond yields dip under 4pc – Independent.ie
“The Irish 10-year yield fell to 3.98pc as Ireland along with countries across Europe benefits from a surge in investor appetite for relatively risky debt.
The yield is down from the yield of 4.15pc just a month ago, when the 10-year bond was first placed with investors.
France, Belgium and Austria all saw their debt costs drop to an all-time low yesterday. They are benefiting from the same trend that is buoying Ireland.”
Arbeitslosenquote sinkt auf 3,2 Prozent – News Wirtschaft: Konjunktur – tagesanzeiger.ch
The Swiss unemployment rate fell to 3.2% in March from a 12-month high in February.
German Industrial Output Rebounds in February – WSJ.com
“German industrial production rebounded in February from an unexpectedly poor start to the year, suggesting that Europe’s largest economy is slowly emerging from a weak patch in the fourth quarter.
Total industrial output in February increased 0.5% on the month, beating economists’ forecasts of a 0.4% gain, data from Germany’s Economics Ministry showed Monday. But a sharp downward revision of January’s industrial output data—to a 0.6% monthly drop from a previously reported flat reading—indicates that any industrial recovery remains muted and that overall economic activity in the first quarter might not have been as strong as previously expected. “
Under-pressure Austria ready to exchange more bank data | South China Morning Post
“Austria was “ready for talks on a more intensive exchange of information on international investors,” Werner Faymann told the Kleine Zeitung daily in an interview to be published Tuesday.
In a separate interview with Kurier, Faymann said that although “the reputation of the country is at stake,” banking secrecy would not be affected in the small and wealthy EU and eurozone member.
“It would be absurd if a grandmother had to show (Finance Minister Maria) Fekter her savings account. This has nothing to do with international tax evasion,” he said.
He added in the Kleine Zeitung that he wanted to press Germany “to have a serious word” with British Prime Minister David Cameron about the Channel Islands.”
Chinese inflation slows sharply in March – FT.com
“Chinese inflation slowed sharply in March as food prices fell after the country’s new year holiday and the central bank drained cash from the economy.
Consumer prices rose 2.1 per cent in March from a year earlier, below expectations and down from a 10-month high of 3.2 per cent in February, when China celebrated the lunar new year. Food price inflation, which had surged to 6 per cent year on year in February, fell back to 2.7 per cent.”
Sweden establishes gender-neutral personal pronoun “hen” « Martin’s thoughts on the web. And life.
“In addition to “han” (“he”) and “hon” (“she”) Swedish speakers can now use “hen”, which does not carry any gender associations, but does relate to a person, not a thing.”
Moody’s: Japan’s rating reflects affordability of government debt
This report from Moody’s is bollocks. Japan’s low rates reflect low default risk, low policy rates and low expected future policy rates, just as they do in the US, UK, Belgium, Switzerland and other places with low rates.
“Moody’s Investors Service says that Japan’s Aa3 rating and stable outlook, and its methodology rating range of Aa1-Aa3, reflect fundamentals that make affordable an extraordinary level of government debt.
The systemic features are: 1) a large pool of domestic savings and low private-sector leverage, which imparts stability in the domestic financial market, and 2) Japan’s very strong international investment position which provides insulation against global financial market shocks and also generates substantial income inflows in support of the current account surplus.
These features allow the government to benefit from the lowest global nominal bond yields, despite having the world’s largest debt burden. In addition, the Japanese government bond (JGB) market has a high degree of immunity to volatility in the external financial climate.”
HTC posts record-low quarterly profit after delayed phone launch | Reuters
“HTC Corp reported a record-low quarterly profit on Monday that missed analysts’ estimates after it delayed the full launch of its 2013 flagship smartphone model, which will now debut against Samsung Electronics’ newest Galaxy.
A shortage of cameras meant HTC managed to introduce its latest HTC One phone in just three markets by the end of the first quarter instead of the planned 80. It does not expect to kick off sales across Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific region before the end of April.”
“There has been no other leader quite like Margaret Thatcher in post war Britain. No other post war Prime Minister has been so admired, or so reviled. She was the first woman to lead a major political party in Britain, the longest serving Prime Minister of the 20th century, and almost the only Prime Minister whose name is synonymous with an ideology.”
Frank Rich on the State of Journalism — New York Magazine
“This spring marks the tenth anniversary of a journalistic scandal that everyone would like to forget, and that many have. On May 11, 2003, an unsuspecting Sunday Times readership woke up to a page-one headline heralding a four-page investigation of one Jayson Blair, a 27-year-old reporter whose serial fabrications and plagiarism constituted what the publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., called “a low point” in the history of America’s greatest newspaper. Even at the time, Blair, a third-tier neophyte in a post-9/11 newsroom, was a bit player in the conflagration engulfing the Times. But his misdeeds exposed a larger breakdown: The same management culture that let Blair run amok on mostly minor assignments also allowed, even encouraged, Judith Miller (among others) to hijack the Times’s credibility and sometimes its front page to bolster the Bush administration’s spurious evidence for Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. The failure of the Times—and of virtually every mainstream news organization, including every broadcast-network news division—to vet the case for the Iraq War remains one of the worst systemic failures in the history of American journalism. The Times, above all, was expected to outperform the pack.”
Carol Thatcher: I always thought of Mum as being 100% cast-iron damage-proof | Mail Online
“the worst thing about dementia: it gets you every time. Sufferers look and act the same but beneath the familiar exterior something quite different is going on. They’re in another world and you cannot enter.”
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