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Sunday, October 19

19th Oct - W/E: Linkfest



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EUROPE
The Italian budget: in trouble in Brussels?FT
The Commission now has two weeks to decide whether it can accept the Italian budget…It will be the subjective judgement of whether the Commission can, with a straight face, say Italy has implemented sufficient reforms to allow for “deviation” from its debt target. The smart money right now is that Rome will get a pass, largely for political reasons. But if you follow the rules, it probably shouldn’t.

European banks and the global banking glutPieria
So there we have it. Forget Asian savers, the yen carry trade, Wall Street excesses. The 2007-8 financial crisis was all the fault of European policy makers and regulators.

Quicktake: The European ParliamentBB
Unifying the EU, or Busting It?

Charlemagne: The squeezed middleThe Economist
Populist parties are narrowing governments’ options in Europe

Cameron eyes quotas for EU workersFT
PM considers cap on national insurance numbers to limit migration

  GERMANY
Germany and the euro: Ordoliberalism revisitedThe Economist
Two new books show that the euro crisis is far from over

Germany Can't Go It Alone AnymoreView / BB
Germany is coming face to face with the reality that it's locked in a feedback cycle with its common-currency partners.

Out of Balance? Criticism of Germany Grows as Economy StallsSpiegel
The latest indicators suggest Germany's once buzzing economy is beginning to stall. The development has created a serious dilemma for Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. Critics say spurring growth is more important than his goal of a balanced budget.

Germany’s flagging economyThe Economist
The German government should invest money in infrastructure, not worry about balancing its budget

German politics: Sedating, not leadingThe Economist
Abroad and at home, a rising chorus is criticising Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, for her economic policies.

The Reckoning: Kohl Tapes Reveal a Man Full of AngerSpiegel
Helmut Kohl spent over 600 hours speaking with the journalist Heribert Schwan about his life's work. The secret tapes reveal a chancellor resentful of his public image and disdainful of many of those around him, including Angela Merkel.

  EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK
European Central Bank suffers leak of secret minutesFT

Weaker euro won't do much to stoke inflationReuters
The ECB not-so-secretly hopes a cheaper currency will boost euro zone inflation. Good luck. The fall in dollar-denominated commodity prices is deflationary. And with demand weak, firms will struggle to pass on higher import prices. Only a huge euro slump would bring real relief.

UNITED STATES
Six charts on the shocking rise in inequalityWaPo

Roll Out the Fire Hoses (Here Comes QE4)Wolf Street
Never before in the long, comic history of mankind and its money have central bankers taken such a keen interest in asset prices. Now they create money, out of nowhere, for the express purpose of pushing them up.

Quicktake: The Fed’s TaperBB
A Slow Farewell to a Gigantic Stimulus

The Fed finally says “enough”The Money Illusion

ASIA
An enigmatic slowdownThe Economist
China does not need a 2008-style stimulus, which pushed inflation far above target. But it does need a bigger impetus than it has received thus far. Most economists looking at the nameless chart above would conclude that the economy is failing to make the most of its growth potential. That conclusion should not change just because the word “China” is added to the title.

MARKETS
Global Housing Watch October 2014IMF
Developments in real estate markets have led to seemingly contradictory concerns about both overheating and slow recovery.

The good, the bad and the ugly of falling energy pricesSober Look
The recent correction in the price of crude oil should have an immediate positive impact on the US consumer as well as on a number of business sectors. However there also may be a significant economic downside to this adjustment.

Global Macro UpdateShort Side of Long
The most volatile week since the Eurozone Crisis during 2011 * Global stock and commodity markets under pressure this week * Annualised returns show Treasuries outperforming other assets

A nod toward market monetarism at the FT?The Money Illusion

Markets: Into uncharted watersFT
After the volatility, investors face the hard reality that stocks and bonds still look expensive

ECONOMICS
It takes $200bn per quarter to feed the machine FT
The charts suggest that zero stimulus would be consistent with 50bp widening in investment grade, or a little over a ten percent quarterly drop in equities. Put differently, it takes around $200bn per quarter just to keep markets from selling off.

One simple reason why global stock markets are reelingThe Telegraph
The world's central banks have slashed stimulus by $125bn a month since the end of last year - leading to the current market rout

What is global market turbulence telling us?FT
The markets may be starting to doubt whether the central banks actually have the weapons needed to stop global deflationary forces in their tracks… But the relief rally on Friday, triggered by the merest hints that central banks may consider further asset purchases, suggests that we are not there yet.

World braces as deflation tremors hit Eurozone bond markets The Telegraph
'The forces of monetary deflation are gathering. Global liquidity is declining and central banks are not doing enough, either in the West or the East to offset the decline,' warns CrossBorderCapital

Tighter monetary conditions – not lower oil prices – are pushing down inflation expectationsMarket Monetarist

Sign wars, and stability, with price level targetingWorthwhile

It’s official: Inflation is deadWaPo

Monetary policy: Tight, loose, irrelevantThe Economist
Interest rates do not seem to affect investment as economists assume

5 Reasons to Worry About DeflationWSJ

Rogoff review of Martin Wolf’s “The Shifts and the Shocks”Harvard
Krugman reviewThe New York Review Books
 “An extraordinary work that deserves to be widely read and discuss

OFF-TOPIC
Making the world’s problem solvers 10% more efficientMedium
Ten years after a Google engineer empowered researchers with Scholar, he can’t bear to leave it

Needed: Better Batteries (Seriously)View / BB
One of the truisms of the 1970s was that solar power was a pipe dream… this fact is rapidly becoming a non-fact. The cost of solar power has fallen off a cliff -- it is now less than 1 percent as expensive as it was in 1977.

35 Years Ago Today, Spreadsheets Were InventedThe Atlantic
Happy Spreadsheet Day! It's time to celebrate the tool—and fear its capacity for destruction.

The Best Film About Islamic Terrorists Is a ComedyThe Atlantic
Chris Morris' Four Lions, released four years ago, skewers the pointlessness and confusion of wannabe jihadists.

Murder Made in MonacoVanity Fair
When the richest woman in Monaco, real-estate heiress Hélène Pastor, was gunned down in Nice, last May, rumors flew in the tiny principality: It was a gangland-style assassination . . . No, it was a message from Vladimir Putin to Obama . . . No, the strong-willed 77-year-old billionaire had angered one of her powerful tenants . . . Delving into the Pastor family history, Mark Seal investigates a motive for murder that couldn’t be closer to home.



These Are the Emails Snowden Sent to First Introduce His Epic NSA LeaksWired
Six months before the world knew the National Security Agency’s most prolific leaker of secrets as Edward Joseph Snowden, Laura Poitras knew him as Citizenfour. For months, Poitras communicated with an unknown “senior government employee” under that pseudonym via encrypted emails, as he prepared her to receive an unprecedented leak of classified documents that he would ask her to expose to the world.


FINNISH
Tekeekö Saksa sen taas – töpseli seinästäJan Hurri / TalSa
Finanssimarkkinat hermoilevat, eikä ihme. Ilmaisen rahan virta keskuspankeilta uhkaa ehtyä, kun Yhdysvaltain Fed sulkee hanojaan ennen kuin euroalueen EKP saa omia hanojaan apposen auki. Hermoilu voi pahentua – ainakin, jos Saksa tekee niin kuin 22 vuotta sitten: vetää töpselin seinästä.

Öljyn hinnan lasku on Venäjälle liikaaNordea
Huomio on palannut Ukrainasta Venäjän talouteen, eikä sekään ole miellyttävää katsottavaa. Liiketoimintaympäristö on heikentynyt entisestään ja lännen sanktiot vaikeuttavat rahoitussektorin toimintaa. Venäjä on painumassa luottolamaan. Lopulta myös Venäjän onni näyttää kääntyneen, kun viime viikkoina öljyn hinnassa on nähty yllättävän suuri pudotus.

Suomi: Pohjoismaiden musta lammasNordea
 
Juhana Vartiainen: Ay-liikettä uskallettava uhmataVerkkouutiset
Valtion taloudellisen tutkimuskeskuksen ylijohtaja Juhana Vartiainen toivoisi, että Suomessa skallettaisiin haastaa työmarkkinajärjestöt Ruotsin tapaan.