Links: 2013-06-25

By Edward Harrison On Jun 25, 2013

Threads in the news:

US: The biggest news in the US continues to be the NSA spy scandal with increasing recrimination flowing from the US toward those harbouring the fugitive Edward Snowden. A good article below from McClatchy points out that the US does the same for dissidents from countries like Iran. I highly recommend that one. In other news, the Supreme Court has ruled on the US voting rights act and dealt a ‘blow’ to it according to the Wall Street Journal. This story is fairly new so I don’t have a bunch of links on it. There are no big stories in the markets outside of the continued analysis of the Fed’s tapering comments.

Europe: The biggest story is in Ireland, where the Irish Independent has revealed a serious of tape recordings of bailed out Irish bank Anglo Irish’s executives talking about the bailout in 2008. There is a lot of controversy surrounding these tapes because they suggest that the executives were not forthcoming about the scale of the problems in the bank and simply wanted the government to get some ‘skin in the game’ in order to get the full bailout they did eventually get. The Irish bank bailouts eventually led the government to its own bailout and taxpayers are very angry.

Asia/EM: In the emerging markets, it continues to be a story of market volatility and worry about rising interest rates. As I have been saying for some time, the locus of greatest financial risk has moved away from Europe to emerging markets. All eyes are on China still because it is not clear how much pain they are willing to mete out in order to reduce froth in the shadow banking credit arena. The potential for an ugly unwind that craters growth has increased significantly.

Links below

China

Liquidity crunch a catalyst for big China slowdown – analysts /Euromoney magazine

China’s ‘Shadow Banks’ Fan Debt-Bubble Fears – WSJ.com

‘Crazy’ levels of pesticides found in Chinese herbs | South China Morning Post

United States

Gensler Staring Down Administration and Banks on Derivatives Reform « naked capitalism

Larry Summers: We have to do better on inequality – FT.com

Dalio’s Bridgewater seen as a loser in market sell-off -sources | Reuters

Economists Are Asking: Did Bernanke Tip Fed’s Hand? – NYTimes.com

Two Fed officials downplay worries over end to stimulus | Reuters

The Bernanke Fed is playing with deflationary fire – Telegraph Blogs