News Links: Merkel Urges Overhaul of EU as Party Votes to Allow Exits From Euro

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for an overhaul of the European Union, advocating closer political ties and tighter budget rules, in her most explicit prescription for ending the debt crisis.

CDU delegates meeting in the eastern German city of Leipzig for their annual party congress today backed a motion on the euro that included a clause permitting euro exits without exclusion from the European Union. They rejected an amendment that would have sought to change voting at the European Central Bank so that it is weighted according to economic size.

Récord histórico desde la entrada en vigor del euro. La prima de riesgo española -el sobreprecio que paga un país para financiarse en los mercados en comparación con Alemania- batió ayer su marca negativa al cerrar la sesión en 432 puntos básicos. España roba así protagonismo a Italia, aunque su prima de riesgo repuntó hasta los 493 puntos básicos frente a los 463,9 puntos del inicio de la jornada. Además, la rentabilidad de la deuda soberana del Estado español superó la barrera del 6% por primera vez desde principios del mes de agosto y se colocó en el 6,134% al cierre de la Bolsa.

Pas vraiment, selon un centre d’études européen. The Lisbon Council a noté la santé économique des pays de la zone euro. La France arrive seulement 13e, entre l’Espagne et l’Italie.

Kyle Bass is a hedge fund founder who saw the financial crisis coming and made a fortune from it – first from America’s sub-prime mortgage crisis and then from betting that Greece would default. Mr Bass told Sarah Montague that Germany cannot be expected to bail out the PIIGS countries – Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain, and that only a massive write-down in those countries’ debts will solve the crisis.

Falls in the price of food, air transport and fuel helped to push the inflation rate lower. Despite the drop, the rate still remains well above the Bank of England’s target of 2%.

(Reuters) – China’s biggest commercial banks face systemic risks if a combination of credit, property, currency and yield curve shocks that could be withstood in isolation were to occur together, the International Monetary Fund warned on Tuesday.

Hundreds of police officers early Tuesday cleared the park in Lower Manhattan that had been the nexus of the Occupy Wall Street movement, arresting dozens of people there after warning that the nearly two-month-old camp would be "cleared and restored" but that demonstrators who did not leave would face arrest.

* Italian bond yields hit 7.1% * No Italian cabinet yet, but Mario Monti ‘making progress’ * France’s AAA rating ‘at risk’ * Eurozone grows by 0.2% in Q3, Germany expands by 0.5%

Krugman is certainly outside the economic consensus, and while that doesn’t mean he’s wrong, it’s certainly prima facie reason to be skeptical about his analysis. Besides, Krugman’s been so pessimistic for so long, now, that it’s almost impossible to imagine what kind of evidence could get him to change his mind and declare that we’re not headed for a lost decade after all. Summers, by contrast, doesn’t think in forecasts so much as in probability distributions – a much less constricting way of thinking.

In this two part paper, the issues regarding settlement of complex derivatives arrangement revealed by the failure of Lehman Brothers is outlined. Many of the failures affect new regulatory proposals such as the rapid resolution regimes under consideration. The First Part deals with terminating and settling derivative contracts.

only 13% of @Economist readers are women. what’s up with that? via Wonkblog https://t.co/3Y2rq6fl

There’s only one thing we know for sure about next year’s campaign for President: the winner will have no time to celebrate. But before we get to that, here are some of the key issues that affect how much fiscal drag the US economy will confront in the next couple of years (all numbers courtesy of Nomura analysts). Below, for various major spending items, we’ve listed the expected decline relative to the prior year.

The question for outsiders as varied as Tea Party Republicans and liberal Democrats is why Mr. Obama would be so insistent that Mr. Geithner stay. As Treasury secretary, he was the highest-ranking member of a team that underestimated the depth of the downturn, and he has managed both to anger Wall Street firms and to be a target of criticism at Occupy Wall Street rallies. For Mr. Obama, however, Mr. Geithner has emerged as the indispensable economic adviser who has outlasted every other member of the original inner circle and whose successes easily outweigh his missteps.

iTunes Match is now available and ready for sign-ups. Apple introduced the service back at WWDC 2011; it’s a way to access all your iTunes music via the cloud, for a fee.

The gap for fiscal 2013 was projected at $2 billion when the current $131.7 billion budget was approved in March. It’s now estimated to have widened to between $3 billion and $3.5 billion, according to the Budget Division’s mid-year update released today by Cuomo’s office. The division also forecast a $350 million shortfall in the current year.

Amazon’s founder talks with Steven Levy about the new Kindle Fire, cloud computing, social media, cultural pioneering and sending people into space.

At the currency exchange booths in the Arena Plaza, one of Budapest’s shiniest new shopping malls, the forint middle rate was around Ft310 to the euro on Saturday, its lowest for well over two years. Yet a healthy-looking crowd wandered the aisles between the branded stores and the central refreshment area at lunchtime teemed with people, punters needing to queue to find a table. The scene contrasted starkly with reports of hard economic times in Hungary, with tens of thousands of families struggling to repay foreign currency mortgages.

Congressional job approval remains at 13% in November, identical to October and tying the all-time Gallup low on this measure. The 2011 average is on track to be the lowest annual rating of Congress in Gallup’s history.

Interesting comparison

Insider trading is illegal – except for members of Congress. A Wall Street executive who buys or sells stock based on insider information would face a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation and quite possibly a federal prosecutor. But senators and congressmen are free to legally trade stock based on nonpublic information they have obtained through their official positions as elected officials – and they do so on a regular basis.

(CBS News)  Washington, D.C. is a town that runs on inside information – but should our elected officials be able to use that information to pad their own pockets? As Steve Kroft reports, members of Congress and their aides have regular access to powerful political intelligence, and many have made well-timed stock market trades in the very industries they regulate. For now, the practice is perfectly legal, but some say it’s time for the law to change.

Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is the latest lawmaker to get caught up in allegations of insider trading while a member of Congress. Then-Rep. Emanuel reportedly sold up to $250,000 in Freddie Mac stock on February 21, 2003 days before it dropped by 10 percent – and weeks before it was publicly revealed that the entity was under criminal investigation for inflating earnings. The allegations are revealed in Peter Schwiezer’s new book "Throw Them All Out," which will hit bookshelves tomorrow.

The knives are out for House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), as bloggers on the left and right call for accountability over allegations he profited from insider knowledge of the 2008 financial meltdown. The allegations, which aired as part of a CBS 60 Minutes investigative report Sunday evening, are that Bachus traded stockoptions after being briefed by Treasury Department and Federal Reserve officials about the impending economic collapse. Bachus denies that he traded on any non-public information.

With market chaos still firmly gripping the eurozone system, it may be time to tackle the next possible hotspot -  the issue of eurozone settlement mechanics. Luckily for us, John Whittaker, an economist at the University of Lancaster, has just come out with a a great paper which tackles exactly this point.

A midnight opening robs the hourly and in-store salary workers of time off with their families on Thanksgiving Day. By opening the doors at midnight, Target is requiring team members to be in the store by 11 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. A full holiday with family is not just for the elite of this nation – all Americans should be able to break bread with loved ones and get a good night’s rest on Thanksgiving!

As expected, the launch of iTunes Match is now upon us, with today’s release of iTunes 10.5.1, available from the iTunes website here. For those living under the proverbial rock, iTunes Match is the new service from Apple that gives you legal access to store all your music in iCloud – even those songs you didn’t originally purchase from iTunes. For $25 per year, iTunes Match will match tracks in your music collection to those in the iTunes catalog – a catalog that now includes over 20 million songs.

Imagine life insurance contracts that wouldn’t pay off if officials declared heart attacks to be "voluntary." Welcome to the world of sovereign credit default swaps, or CDSs.