News Links: Why Bernanke has Failed, and Will Continue to Fail

Ben Bernanke’s zero-interest rate policy (ZIRP) and command-economy efforts to maintain mispricing of risk, debt and assets are destroying capital and capitalism. No wonder his policies have failed so miserably.

Can we all at least agree that there is a basic need for somebody to do the (much better) job of overseeing the products that we need for our health and well-being? Then why is the CFPB, a body intended to oversee the financial products that are now as essential to our lives as food and medicine, so contentious?

The "age of fiscal constraint" is temporary and ultimately governments will have to return to fiscal stimulus as their economies weaken. Otherwise, it will be a very grim future.

Americans should quit listening to austerity hawks and embrace time-tested economic logic.

Your Wi-Fi network is your conveniently wireless gateway to the internet, and since you’re not keen on sharing your connection with any old hooligan who happens to be walking past your home, you secure your network with a password, right? Knowing, as you might, how easy it is to crack a WEP password, you probably secure your network using the more bulletproof WPA security protocol.

He gave off the impression of an executive waiting out one more year in a job, working for a man he admired, in an ungovernable town he disliked. Daley appeared to have committed a cardinal sin in public life: He had been too honest about how he felt in public.

British Retail Consortium said December was the best trading month of the year with a dazzling pre-Christmas week of trading

"Je cherche 500 signatures", lance l’ancienne star du football Eric Cantona, 45 ans, aujourd’hui acteur, en une du quotidien Libération, ce mardi 10 janvier. Lundi soir, la lettre qu’il a écrite aux maires de France afin d’obtenir les cinq cents signatures nécessaires à une candidature à l’élection présidentielle a été mise en ligne sur le site Internet du journal, entretenant savamment le suspens sur l’objectif de sa démarche : on ne trouvait ainsi nulle part de déclaration officielle de candidature.

Consumer credit surged nearly 10% at an annualized rate in November, the Fed announced, with revolving credit – credit cards – up 8.5% in the month and non-revolving debt (auto and student loans and such) up 10.7%.

In an auction Monday, Germany sold €3.9 billion ($4.96 billion) of six-month bills that had an average yield of negative 0.0122%, the first time on record that yields at a German debt auction moved into negative territory.

Ireland clearly needs to negotiate a stand-by second bailout, Citigroup chief economist Willem Buiter said during a visit to Dublin today.

January is the month of broken resolutions. The gyms are packed for a week, Jenny Craig is full of new recruits and houses are cleaned for the first time in ages. We pledge to finally become the person we want to be: svelte, neat and punctual. Alas, it doesn’t take long before the stairmasters are once again sitting empty and those same dirty T-shirts are piling up at the back of the closet

De Nederlandse Aardoliemaatschappij (NAM) heeft een nieuw gasveld ontdekt. Het gaat om het grootste gasveld op het land sinds 1995. De gasvoorraad werd gevonden in het noordoosten van Friesland en zou ongeveer 4 miljard kubieke meter beslaan. Dat zei de NAM maandag.

Die Kapitalerhöhung bei UniCredit hat an der Börse keine Fans. Ein Verkauf der Bank Austria gilt Experten als letzte Möglichkeit.

In der Affäre um Nationalbank-Präsident Philipp Hildebrand nimmt erstmals sein Kundenberater bei der Bank Sarasin Stellung: Hildebrands Frau Kashya habe am 15. August den umstrittenen Dollar-Kaufauftrag in ihrer Galerie aus eigener Initiative mündlich erteilt.

The story of Ireland’s bailout in November 2010 has been partly told in dribs and drabs. Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, Patrick Honohan said that the Minister for Finance in November 2010, the late Brian Lenihan was "crestfallen" when he learned from the ECB that Ireland couldn’t default even on the unguaranteed debts of the banks. The Governor went on to say that Minister Lenihan was "offered no room" for negotiation on the matter.

One of the most interesting things to come out of this year’s American Economic Association (AEA) meetings is the formal adoption of a code of conduct in relation to  potential conflicts of interest in the AEA’s publications. The idea of the code is to provide more information to readers of published work about the funding sources and other commitments authors of reports may have about their subject matter.