News Links: Europe Can’t Move Fast Enough to Halt Crisis

Like it or not, the ECB is the one institution that can act quickly. To be sure, arguably it is now too late to act "quickly." Now quick action is needed to just limit the damage as financial conditions across Europe freeze solid as a block of ice. This is not shaping up to be a festive holiday season in Europe.

Euro-Bonds, unbegrenzte Staatsanleihenkäufe: In einer visionären Rede fordert Schröder all das, was Merkel der EU verwehrt. Der Altkanzler empfiehlt Europa zwei Partnerschaften.

Die Bundeskanzlerin will sie nicht, und auch bei den Deutschen sind gemeinsame europäische Staatsanleihen wenig beliebt: Laut einer Umfrage lehnen 57 Prozent der Bundesbürger Euro-Bonds kategorisch ab.

Italy has been forced to pay record interest rates in a 10bn euro ($13bn; £9bn) auction of treasury bills.

The Hungarian forint plunged on Friday after Moody’s stripped the country of its investment-grade bond rating late on Thursday for the first time in 15 years and cut it to junk.

Monique van der Vorst (pictured), from the Netherlands, was paralysed from the waist down and had been confined to a wheelchair for 13 years.

A tribunal in Malaysia, spearheaded by that nation’s former Prime Minister, yesterday found George Bush and Tony Blair guilty of "crimes against peace" and other war crimes for their 2003 aggressive attack on Iraq, as well as fabricating pretexts used to justify the attack. The seven-member Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal – which featured an American law professor as one of its chief prosecutors – has no formal enforcement power, but was modeled after a 1967 tribunal in Sweden and Denmark that found the U.S. guilty of a war of aggression in Vietnam, and, even more so, after the U.S.-led Nuremberg Tribunal held after World War II. Just as the U.S. steadfastly ignored the 1967 tribunal on Vietnam, Bush and Blair both ignored the summons sent to them and thus were tried in absentia.

Der EU-Kommissionspräsident und die Bundeskanzlerin sind tief zerstritten. Während Merkel für langfristige Lösungen plädiert, ist Barroso für schnelle Hilfen.

This post from MacroBusiness points to a development that has (predictably) gone largely unreported in America, namely, that life expectancy is declining. The article discusses some of the probable causes and implications. It interestingly omits rising income disparity as a culprit.

1. Upon announcing that the country is leaving the Eurozone, the government of that country would announce that it would be making payments – to government employees etc. – exclusively in the new currency. Thus the government would stop using the euro as a means of payment. 2. The government would also announce that it would only accept payments of tax in this new currency. This would ensure that the currency was valuable and, at least for a while, in very short supply. And that is pretty much it.

China is facing its worst wave of labour unrest since a series of wildcat strikes at Japanese-owned car plants last year, as declining export orders force factories to reduce worker pay. More than 10,000 workers in Shenzhen and Dongguan, two leading

As the euro totters, the world waits for the German chancellor to act. Will she?

The crisis in the euro area is turning into a panic and dragging the zone into recession. The risk that the currency disintegrates within weeks is alarmingly high

Slowenien in der Hochzins-Falle: Seit zwei Wochen liegen die Zinsen für Staatsanleihen über dem kritischen Wert von sieben Prozent.

the below chart shows the average quarterly revenue derived from different investment banking segments, after writedowns.

Former prime minister gave Britain a legal right to stay out of euro which shadow chancellor exploited in full

Angela Merkel faces down French demands for action from eurozone’s central bank

Im Streit um Wege aus der Schuldenkrise werden Eurobonds zwar weiter heftig diskutiert, die Ablehnung Berlins schwächelt aber

Fitch downgrades Portugal’s debt to junk as biggest strike in years halts transport, healthcare and schools in protest over cuts

Die Euro-Schuldenkrise setzt den polnischen Zloty unter Druck. Schuld daran sind anscheinend Währungsspekulationen. Polen fürchtet, die zulässige Marke für die Gesamtverschuldung zu reißen.

A table in the fiscal update, however, suggest Ontario isn’t so far off the craziness that has reigned in Europe. Measured on a comparable basis using OECD numbers, Ontario’s net debt-to-GDP ratio – debt as a percentage of annual economic production – will hit 40% within a few years (see table) to place Ontario on par with Spain. When Ontario’s debt is added to Ontario’s share of federal debt, Ontario looks not all that different from recent trends in Europe. Ontario is not Italy, but in the next couple of years of spending cuts, it might begin to feel a little like Italy.

The yield on benchmark British gilts fell below German bunds for the first time in over two years as investors regarded Britain as a safer bet than the eurozone’s largest economy.

Robot guards with sensors to detect abnormal behaviour will soon begin patrolling South Korean prisons to ease the burden on their human counterparts, researchers said on Thursday.