FINANCIAL News, Money, Banks, Economic and Financial Crisis, Dec 20, 2011

Top business story in '11: Europe financial crisis The Associated Press The rising threat of default by heavily indebted European countries spread fear across financial markets and weighed on economies worldwide. As the year came to a close, banks and investors nervously watched Europe's political andfinancial leaders ... See all stories on this topic »

Debt crisis: live Telegraph.co.uk 17.31 The Moody's report calls the UK "one of the most competitive of the large advanced economies in the world", adding that the pound and central bank provide "substantial flexibility in developing responses to economic and financial shocks" and debt ... See all stories on this topic » Telegraph.co.uk

Irish rescue program 'fragile,' IMF says Washington Post And the weight of outstanding bank debt is making it hard for the country to meet the financial targets laid out under the joint IMF-European Union rescue program, which so far has been a by-the-book success. To shore up faith in their country's ... See all stories on this topic »

Blame a Banking Glut for the Financial Crisis Wall Street Journal (blog) And yet the recycling of US funding through its banking sector and then back into the US helped to inflate the US's housing bubble. This wasn'ta glut of savings, but rather a glut of credit produced by a rampant financial industry barely limited by an ... See all stories on this topic »

Debt Crisis: IMF backs Ireland's plans to reduce bank debt repayment Irish Independent According to the IMF, Ireland has met the main budgetary and banking targets set out as part of the EU/IMF/ECB bailout programme but risks to the economy'sperformance exists mainly because of the eurozone debt crisis and a weaker worldwide economy. ... See all stories on this topic »

Fed Close To New Financial Buffers For Banks WISN Milwaukee Over the past two decades, banks drastically increased the money they use for loans and making financial bets, compared to the deposits they took in. Such leveraging is often cited as one of the causes of the 2008 financial crisis. ... See all stories on this topic »

Top business story in '11: Europe financial crisis Bellingham Herald By JONATHAN FAHEY - AP Business Writer The rising threat of default by heavily indebted European countries spread fear acrossfinancial markets and weighed on economies worldwide. As the year came to a close, banks and investors nervously watched ... See all stories on this topic » Bellingham Herald

Most European Stocks Drop as Finance Ministers Discuss IMF Aid BusinessWeek The European Central Bank will offer unlimited funding against collateral for as long as three years in a tender tomorrow in President Mario Draghi's latest attempt to get cash flowing around the financial system. It's up to lenders to decide what to... See all stories on this topic »

Czech Republic - Factors To Watch on Dec 20 Reuters Story: Related news: CBANK CHIEF: LOAN TO IMF IS RISKY: A potential loan by the Czech central bank to the IMF considered as part of a broader European package to navigate the euro zone out of its debt crisis would lock up an overly large part the ... See all stories on this topic »

RBS Investing Cuts, UK Bank Rules, MF Global: Compliance BusinessWeek Having a smaller investment bank diminishes the fallout Osborne faces from voters angry at the bonuses paid to top bankers as he drives through the biggest public-spending cuts in more than half a century because of the financial crisis. ... See all stories on this topic »

China's Hooverian Twist And The New Asian Financial Crisis Seeking Alpha And the whole crisis is starting to take on striking similarities to the United States' crash in 1929 and the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997. In a nutshell, the solution has been tariffs, higher taxes, more supply, and suggestions of hard money ... See all stories on this topic »

Markets and Europe weigh on interest rate call The Australian "Of course our financial sector, like the entire economy, is not immune from a further deterioration in global conditions, but at this stage Australian banks are not having trouble accessing the funds they need," the Treasurer said last night. ... See all stories on this topic »

Tighter bank rules give fillip to shadow banks Reuters UK Financial leaders in the G20 group of developed and emerging economies had intended to draw a lesson from the financial crisis by ratcheting up their surveillance of banking products, players and transactions. While regulators have announced that they ... See all stories on this topic »

US, European Union banks face rough year ahead Oman Daily Observer Although the US economy is growing, new regulations aimed at curbing the abuses that led to the 2007-2008 financial crisis, and new consumer protection rules, are cutting back business areas that were strong sources of pre-crisis banking profits. ... See all stories on this topic » Oman Daily Observer

Is China The Next EU? Forbes Now the bubble is bursting – and there are real reasons to fear financial andeconomic crisis.” Americans heard the same thing in 2007 and 2008, that a shadow derivatives market was going to destroy the US economy. The thing is, there is no shadow ... See all stories on this topic »

Implementing Vickers won't stop the next crisis Left Foot Forward So banks play an vital macroeconomic role, the aggregate of their lending decisions shaping the trajectory of our economy. The fact that the majority of new money in the economy is created by banksfor non-productive activity (financial speculation and ... See all stories on this topic » Left Foot Forward

Roberto Saviano and Nouriel Roubini Discussing the Global Financial Mafia at NYU Huffington Post While Saviano pointed out the vulnerability of some US banks for moneylaundering and economic crime, and then established a connection to thefinancial crisis and the Italian Mafia, Roubini declared social inequality as the fundamental evil of the ... See all stories on this topic »

FTSE CLOSE: Spanish bond auction and strong German economicdata boosts market This is Money By This Is Money Reporters 17.15 (close): A successful Spanish bond auction and strong German economic data eased fears over the eurozone crisis and drove world markets higher today. Sentiment over the state of Europe's finances was boosted after ... See all stories on this topic » This is Money

Just Don't Call It a 'Bailout' Wall Street Journal But there has been widespread resistance to adopting sweeping measures aimed at banks' deep underlying problems. Some of the recent European plans resemble the supplemental measures adopted by the US at the height of its financial crisis. ... See all stories on this topic » Wall Street Journal

A 'come together' consolidation? Business Times - Malaysia There is an implicit realisation that one does not need to have the “toxic assets” on the balance sheet to be collaterally damaged, as the financial economy (stage one) eventually impacts the real economy (stage two). Islamic banks finance the real ... See all stories on this topic »

US investigation links Lebanese Canadian Bank to Hezbollah Deutsche Welle With Syria's own financial crisis being exacerbated by its increasingly violent civil uprising, Hezbollah has had to look elsewhere. "It's not much of a secret anymore that Hezbollah used illicit channels to raise funds, or launder money," Reinoud ... See all stories on this topic »

Skidding Bank Shares Worry Investors New York Times 16, 2009, Bank of America was trading near $15 a share, a far cry from the $4.99 at which it closed Monday. The loss of two-thirds of its value far exceeds the drop in other battered financial institutions like Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo ... See all stories on this topic »

Crisis fails to dent German optimism Financial Times Separately, the Nuremberg-based GfK research group reported that German consumers' economic expectations also brightened this month. “What's a bit surprising is that when you read the news and see the conditions in financial markets, this is totally ... See all stories on this topic » Financial Times

US Stocks Slump on Concern Europe Failing to Tame Debt Crisis BusinessWeek Financial shares had the biggest decline among 10 groups in the benchmark measure this year, tumbling 23 percent. Stocks fell today as European CentralBank President Mario Draghi said substantial risks to the economy remain and the law forbids him ... See all stories on this topic »

World crisis and the European and US debts AsiaNews.it Indeed, real estate has never recovered since the peak of the crisis[9] and prices remain low. It is not only a failure of political andfinancial leaders and central bank executives, but also the failure of a cultural model. ... See all stories on this topic » AsiaNews.it

Analysis - Patchy rupee defence to slow, not halt, decline Reuters Australia's Westpac Banking Corp has made shorting the rupee against the dollar one of its top trade recommendations for 2012, while UBS expects a test of 55 per dollar. Jamal Mecklai, who heads FX brokerage Mecklai Financial Services, ... See all stories on this topic »

Hedge-Fund Refuge Sought by Traders Amid Bank Cuts: Commodities BusinessWeek Financial firms are losing people as US and European regulators seek to limit holdings across raw materials and ban so-called proprietary trading that uses shareholders' cash. Slowing economic growth and Europe's deepening debt crisismay crimp ... See all stories on this topic »

EUROPEAN OPENING NEWS INCLUDING: Eurozone finance ministers agreed to provide ... Proactive Investors UK The European debt crisis put US banks at risk of financial contagion, and a disorderly outcome threatens to ongoing US economic recovery according to the San Francisco Reserve Bank. (RTRS) Fitch said that the Fed's Basel III rules could put a further ... See all stories on this topic »

Money Power World Rule Bay Area Indymedia by Stephen Lendman "(T)he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and theeconomy of the world ... See all stories on this topic »

Okonjo-Iweala: IMF Not Dictating Our Reforms THISDAY Live In the same vein, we look at the banking and financial sectors. We are doing that because we realise that there is massive connectedness between countries. As we've seen at the moment, the European crisis is affecting other countries across the globe ... See all stories on this topic »

I have never sought World Bank help, Dr M says again The Borneo Post “As far as I can remember, and I have not forgotten, I never sent any request for anymoney, not during the financial crisis or even after that. I had just criticised the World Bank, then I ask money from them for what? I would be stupid,” he told ... See all stories on this topic »

Permanent Crisis: The First 5 Years Gold Seek SO 2012 will mark the fifth anniversary of the global financial crisis. There's little reason to think it's reached its end yet. Merry Christmas. Banking and household leverage in the rich West has barely ticked lower from the credit bubble's historic ... See all stories on this topic »

Exclusive: Time to stop bashing bankers Yorkshire Post The Government yesterday gave its formal approval to plans to ring-fence the country's top retail banks from their riskier investmentbanking arms, in order to give better protection to taxpayers in case of future financial crises. ... See all stories on this topic » Yorkshire Post

Japan M&A, Bank Examiner 'Secrets,' Dark Pools: Compliance BusinessWeek Informal regulatory approaches, such as suggestions made by bank examiners to compliance officers, also mean the public can't see when regulators do a poor job, said Viral Acharya, an author of several books on financial regulation who teaches at New ... See all stories on this topic »

Tuesday Papers: Osborne reins in RBS's global ambitions Citywire.co.uk by Himanshu Singh on Dec 20, 2011 at 04:13 Financial Times: British Chancellor George Osborne has told Royal Bank of Scotland to return to its roots as a UK-focused lender; he said its future was in personal, small business and corporatebanking, ... See all stories on this topic »

Frank Cassell Telegraph.co.uk The Economics and Politics of International Money. At the Treasury, Cassell was an economic adviser in the area of “home finance” and balance of payments forecasting before being briefly seconded to the Federal Reserve in Minneapolis in 1970. ... See all stories on this topic » Telegraph.co.uk

The euro in a shrinking zone CNN (blog) So the crisis of the sovereigns engulfs the banks. To put weakened governments on iron rations, as Merkel did, was to make a financial crisis inevitable. To continue to preach salvation through austerity as the economy declines andbanks collapse is to ... See all stories on this topic »

Fed Close To New Financial Buffers For Banks - Project Economy ... Over the past two decades, banks drastically increased the money they use for loans and making financial bets, compared to the deposits they took in. Such leveraging is often cited as one of the causes of the 2008 financial crisis. With larger ... KMBC.com - Money Headlines

Eurozone to push on with crisis steps, Fitch doubts outcome Vittorio Grilli, chairman of the EU's Economic and Financial Committee, ... this week by offering more cash to the IMF and long-term liquidity to banks, ... www.reuters.com/.../us-eurozone-idUSTRE7BF0OX20111218

Christine Lagarde: European financial crisis is too serious for ... The managing director of the IMF, said the escalating financial crisis ...Yesterday, the head of the IMF described the prospects for the global economy as... www.telegraph.co.uk/.../Christine-Lagarde-European-financial...

Euro zone IMF loan target in danger as UK ... - Yahoo! Finance Finance: Euro zone ministers agreed on Monday to boost IMF resources by 150 billion euros to ward off the debt crisis and won support for more money from EU... Economic and Financial Committee, looks on during a news conference in Rome ... France hopes banks will use the money to buy euro zone bonds but with... finance.yahoo.com/.../eurozone-pursue-crisis-action-fitch-011...

IMF Survey: Hong Kong Economy Sound, but at Risk from a Euro ... Chinese bank employee counts renminbi. Hong Kong has become the top offshore market for the Chinese currency ... But the report warns that if a crisis in Europe reverberates through the global economic and financial ... “As a small, very open, economy that is reliant on trade and financial ... Follow us for the latestnews ... www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/.../CAR120911A.htm

Eurozone crisis live: IMF's Lagarde warns of return to Great ... Christine Lagarde warns that no country is immune from the financial crisis ... It warned that the banks all face difficult economic conditions: ... Buchholz told the Jeff Randall Live show on Sky News that: ..... suggest that growth in the sector is actually contracting, money supply growth last month was the slowest for more than ... www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/dec/.../eurozone-crisis-live

BBC News - Q&A: What does the eurozone debt crisis mean for the ... How might the eurozone financial crisis impact the UK? ... A banking crisis: Eurozone banks have found it harder to borrow money, especially in foreign ... www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16082752

EU debt crisis: ECB offers banks unlimited cash | Economy | News ... European Central Bank President Mario Draghi moved to ease Europe's credit crunch today with new measures, ... Financial Post Magazine .... program and allow the eurozone to lend money to IMF so it can help fight the eurozone debtcrisis. ... business.financialpost.com/.../ecb-offers-banks-unlimited-cash/

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