News And Market Re-Cap – RanSquawk / ZH
Frontrunning: April 17 – ZH
The Lunch Wrap – alphaville / FT
EM New York headlines – beyondbrics / FT
Morning MarketBeat: Apple Woes Contained, For Now – MarketBeat / WSJ
Morning Take-Out – DealBook / NYT
Daily Press Summary – Open Europe
Germany rejects Sarkozy’s demands for ECB intervention to promote growth; IMF members call on Europe to increase bailout funds further
Debt crisis: live – The Telegraph
Europe Crisis Tracker – WSJ
FX Options Analytics – Saxo Bank
EURO CRISIS
IMF still won't admit truth about the euro – The Telegraph
It is often said that travel broadens the mind. Not so for finance ministers gathering in Washington DC this week for the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund and G20. For them, the agenda will seem wearily familiar.
Why Richard Koo’s idea won’t save the Eurozone – Felix Salmon / Reuters
Koo: Eurozone governments should limit the sale of their government bonds to their own citizens. Salmon: limiting buyers to few assets would not make them purchase certain assets.
But his intent on debating the role of the ECB wasn’t a U-turn. He’d long advocated that the ECB act more directly in the debt crisis, one of the many points of conflict between him and Merkel—all swept under the rug during their dog and pony shows last October and November when they tried to portray a unified front in dealing with Greece. But now he has re-found his very French voice.
I see increasing chatter about a “balance sheet recession” in Europe, debt crisis or even a potential banking crisis. But this is merely a symptom of what’s really ravaging Europe. Europe has a currency crisis. The Euro is unworkable as is.
EURO CRISIS: SPAIN
Spanish-Bailout Chatter Rising – MarketBeat / WSJ
“It is clear Spanish banks have been buying Spanish government bonds in an attempt to play the carry trade,” former Rothschild banker Kiron Sarkar wrote. Given rising bond yields, he said, the banks will see “material losses.” For now it seems the banks have run out of money and can’t buy any more bonds. That means Spain is going to have a “real problem” funding the rest of its financing needs this year.
The only other possible sentiment shifter in the short-term would be if the IMF managed to raise significant new crisis-fighting resources which could be deployed to defend a country like Spain
OTHER
Disclosure, transparency, and market discipline – voxeu.org
Faith in market discipline has been shattered by the financial crisis. This column argues that the failure of market discipline has different roots. It points to a lack of transparency and efficiency, particularly when it is needed most. In order to rectify this, however, it is not enough to merely increase the provision and disclosure of information. Instead, transparency depends on how that information is interpreted and used.
Four trends in central bank-land – alphaville / FT
…make fantastic political punching bags, and the popularity of this tactic is growing…(maybe) moving away from inflation targeting…not liking the euro…becoming equities-curious.
…make fantastic political punching bags, and the popularity of this tactic is growing…(maybe) moving away from inflation targeting…not liking the euro…becoming equities-curious.
Dividends Keep You Anchored – The Psy-Fi Blog
Global Trade Set for a Downturn? – Alpha Now / Thomson Reuters
traffic through the Suez Canal in Egypt – a key cargo transportation route – has nosedived in recent weeks and months.
What five years of crisis history tells us – alphaville / FT
the crisis sparked by subprime mortgages now has nearly five years’ worth of observational data. This is very exciting for nerds, since the conclusions from studying the period will get progressively more meaningful and insightful — something not lost on the credit strategy team at Deutsche Bank when they published their 2012 Default Study on Monday.
OFF-TOPIC
FiveBooks Interviews: Keith Lowe on the Aftermath of World War Two – The Browser
Europe after the war was a scene of both physical and moral destruction. The author of Savage Continent recommends essential reading for understanding the suffering, dislocation and fighting after the war was over
A Curated Linkfest For The Smartest People On The Web! – Simoleon Sense
The Perils of Paying for Status – Scientific American
Knowing when to pass on that luxury limo or overpriced pen
#Econohipsters – NPR
Econ nerds ran wild on Twitter today with a pair of hashtags -- #econohipster and #econohipsters. Here are a few of our favorites.
Visualizing Ocean Shipping – Sapping Attention
1) about 100 years of ship paths in the seas, as recorded in hundreds of ship's log books, by hand, one or several times a day. 2) seasonality: it compresses all those years onto a single span of January-December, to reveal seasonal patterns.