Greek PM " Worst Fears Confirmed on Economy "

Cnbc : Prime Minister George Papandreou on Friday vowed to ignore the political costs and take drastic measures to pull Greece out of a debt crisis threatening the stability of the euro zone. 

Speaking to parliament after a visit by EU economic inspectors, Papandreou said Greece did not want other countries to pay for its debts but expected solidarity from its European peers as it struggled with worse than expected fiscal problems.

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Concerns grow over China's sale of US bonds

Evidence is mounting that Chinese sales of US Treasury bonds over recent months are intended as a warning shot to Washington over escalating political disputes rather than being part of a routine portfolio shift as thought at first. 

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George Soros on China

A hard landing for Chinese markets could come, Soros said, due to a significant increase in supply offset by falling demand. China's regulatory authorities have managed the situation well thus far, he said, but he's concerned about how various countries are maneuvering in the face of global imbalances.

Looking back at the past year's responses to the global financial crisis, Soros says lending by Chinese government-owned banks was indeed excessive, but that regulatory decisions to adjust reserve ratio requirements were appropriate.

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Ben Bernanke's testimony to the US Congress

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http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/testimony/bernanke20100224a.htm

The world economy has no easy way out of the mire

By Martin Wolf , Ft.com : Anybody who looks carefully at the world economy will recognise that a degree of monetary and fiscal stimulus unprecedented in peacetime is all that is prodding it along, not only in high-income countries, but also in big emerging ones. The conventional wisdom is that it will also be possible to manage a smooth exit. Nothing seems less likely. So let us consider the endgame, instead.

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Fed chief Bernanke: U.S. economic recovery not yet self-sustaining

(MarketWatch) : Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke told lawmakers on Wednesday that the economic recovery is not yet on a sustainable path, and that near-zero interest rates are still needed. Strong growth in the latter half of 2009 was fueled by temporary factors, Bernanke told members of the House Financial Services Committee. "A sustained recovery will depend on continued growth in private sector final demand," Bernanke said. There are some positive signs on the outlook, but the job market remains "quite weak," said the Fed chairman. The Federal Funds rate is likely to remain low for an "extended period," he said

US New Home Sales Tumble to Record Lows

cnbc : Sales of newly built U.S. single-family homes unexpectedly fell to a record low in January, according to government data on Wednesday that hinted at potential trouble for the fragile housing market recovery.

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Jim Rogers : UK will lose AAA credit rating, not buying Indian Equity

Do you think that the UK is going to lose its AAA credit rating this year?

Of course. How can they maintain the credit rating other than fixing the books, or something. The UK has staggering amounts of debt that it has taken on in the past few years.

What is your view on Indian equities? Do you still like Sri Lanka and China better?

I am not buying either China or Sri Lanka at the moment. I am not buying equities anywhere at the moment because there had been such big run ups and cheers all over the world that I am just sitting and watching. 

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World's greenest skyscraper

cnn : The Holy Grail of modern architecture is to design a zero-energy building, or ZEB. ZEBs use solar, wind, and geothermal systems to produce at least as much energy as they tap from the grid. 

China National Tobacco, the owner, wanted a ZEB for its energy cost savings and the green cred.

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Toyota's Problems and the real Cause

Forbes : The entire auto industry is frightened. It isn't about Toyota, replacing some floor mats, or shaving a bit off accelerator pedals or sticking a tiny piece of metal into brake assemblies. If those are problems, they are easy to correct. What's frightening is the ghost, the ghost in the machine. Might something in the electronic computer systems make our cars suddenly speed out of control, into some unintended acceleration?  

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Thoughts From Kenneth Rogoff

Was Milton Friedman Right About the Euro

At the time of the euro’s launch in January 1999, Milton Friedman famously observed that the euro would not survive the first major European economic recession. The sovereign debt crisis presently engulfing Greece, Spain, and Portugal in the wake of the “Great Recession” would suggest that, in the end, Friedman will prove to have been right. It does not seem too early for U.S. policy makers to start pondering the serious international economic and geopolitical ramifications that would flow from any eventual breakup of the euro.

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European banks face showdown over €1 trillion of debt

telegraph.co.uk  : European banks need to roll over €1 trillion (£877bn) of debt over the next two years at a much higher cost and in direct competition with hungry sovereign states, according to a report by Morgan Stanley. 

The bank has advised clients to prepare for chillier times as monetary tightening begins in the US and China, causing major spill-over effects in Europe.

Roughly €560bn of EU bank debt matures in 2010 and €540bn in 2011. The banks will have to roll over loans at a time when unprecedented bond issuance by governments worldwide risks saturating the debt markets. European states alone must raise €1.6 trillion this year. 

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Berkshire's big day: $24 billion in trading

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway got a rousing introduction to the S&P 500 this month -- though it wasn't quite the most lavish ever.

Investors bought and sold more than $24 billion worth of Berkshire shares last Friday, the day the stock joined the S&P 500 index of big companies. That is the second-largest single-day volume for a U.S. stock in the past decade, according to a survey of currently listed companies by Capital IQ, a unit of S&P.

Marc Faber " Buy farmland and gold"

Dr Faber, who advised his audience to pull out of American stocks one week before the 1987 crash and was among a handful who predicted the more recent financial crisis, vies with the Nouriel Roubini, the economist, as a rival claimant for the nickname Dr Doom. 

“The next war will be a dirty war,” he told fund managers: "What are you going to do when your mobile phone gets shut down or the internet stops working or the city water supplies get poisoned?” 

His investment advice, which was the first keynote speech of CLSA’s annual investment forum in Tokyo, included a suggestion that fund managers buy houses in the countryside because it was more likely that violence, biological attack and other acts of a “dirty war” would happen in cities.

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Fed Prez Thomas Hoenig Explains The Crisis In 60 Seconds

Chanos See's Dubai 1,000 Times in China

Bloomberg : Hedge fund manager Jim Chanos delivered in January that China is Dubai times a thousand. The costs of wasteful investments in empty offices and shopping malls and in underutilized infrastructure will weigh on China, Chanos, president of New York-based Kynikos Associates Ltd., said in a speech at the London School of Economics. “We may find that that’s what pops the Chinese bubble sooner rather than later.” 

Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, says China is overdoing it. “It does not make sense for China to build more empty buildings and add to capacities in industries where you already have overcapacity,” Faber told Bloomberg Television on Feb. 11. “I think the Chinese economy will decelerate very substantially in 2010 and could even crash.”  

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Soros : The euro will face bigger tests than Greece

Otmar Issing, one of the fathers of the euro, correctly states the principle on which the single currency was founded. As he wrote in the FT last week, the euro was meant to be a monetary union but not a political one. Participating states established a common central bank but refused to surrender the right to tax their citizens to a common authority. This principle was enshrined in the Maastricht treaty and has since been rigorously interpreted by the German constitutional court. The euro was a unique and unusual construction whose viability is now being tested.

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