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IMF Official: Greece Will Need Third Bailout - (online.wsj.com) Greece will need a third bailout package from
the euro zone, and the country's European creditors will have to find the money
for it, according to a senior International Monetary Fund official. "Greece
will require additional financing, which may take the form either of
official-sector involvement or of additional loans, hopefully on more favorable
terms," Thanos Catsambas, an IMF alternate executive director, who
represents Greece at the Fund's board, said in an interview. Mr. Catsambas is
an IMF veteran with experience of Fund programs in Europe, Asia, Latin America
and the Middle East.
Shadow Bankers Vanishing Leave China Victims Seeing Scams -
(www.bloomberg.com) To live out his retirement
years, He Zhongkui was counting on steady income from an investment that
promised interest payments five times higher than what he could earn in a Chinese bank. Now He, a
62-year-old former municipal official in Wenzhou who rides a rusty bicycle, is
cutting back on food and gasoline, having found himself one of a growing number
of victims of China’s nebulous world of shadow banking. A
“friend,” who he said had been paying him 2,400 yuan($379)
a month after He gave him one-third of his 600,000-yuan life savings to invest
in real estate, suddenly disappeared. So did the payments and principal. “I
called, but the number was no longer in existence,” said He, who worked for the
Water Resources Bureau in Wenzhou, a city of 9 million people on China’s east
coast. “I went to his home, but nobody was there. “I was even invited to his
daughter’s wedding, for heaven’s sake. It was all a scam.” China’s slowest economic growth in three years and a slumping property market, where many
so-called shadow-banking investments are parked, are squeezing millions of
Chinese who have invested the money of friends and acquaintances chasing higher
yields to honor those payments.
Census: Middle class shrinks to an all-time low - (www.washingtonpost.com) The vise on the middle class
tightened last year, driving down its share of the income pie as the number of
Americans in poverty leveled off and the most affluent households saw their
portion grow, new census data released Wednesday showed. Income
inequality increased by 1.6 percent, the Census Bureau said in its annual
report on poverty, income and health insurance. This was the biggest one-year
increase in almost two decades and suggested that a trend in place since the
late 1970s was picking up steam. As a snapshot of a nation recovering from one
of its worst recessions ever, the census report had both shadows and
highlights. Median household income declined $777, to $50,054 before taxes. But
the poverty rate, which many experts had predicted would rise to rates unseen
in nearly half a century, inched down a hair to 15 percent, a decline of
about 100,000 people.
Spain
Calls Europe’s Bluff as Region’s Debt Crisis Eases - (www.cnbc.com) Europe's four-year old debt crisis seems to be
in remission. Dutch votersbacked pro-euro parties in Wednesday's
poll, the German Constitutional Court gave the go-ahead for the region's
permanent bailout fund and the European Central Bank's (ECB) latest bond program seems
to be working, even before it's begun. Yields on Spanish
and Italian bonds have fallen, the euro is at its strongest
in four months against the dollar and European
stocks are trading at their highest in almost a month. The
turnaround has been so dramatic that it's allowed Spain, one of the most badly
affected countries, to suggest that it may not
need aid after all.
Schaeuble Cautions Spain Against Aid Bid in Poke at France -
(www.bloomberg.com) German Finance Minister Wolfgang
Schaeuble discouraged Spain from
seeking a full international bailout, saying another request for outside aid
risked a fresh round of financial-market turmoil. “I’m not in the camp that
says ‘take the money,’” Schaeuble said in an interview in Berlin today when
asked about French moves to press Spanish Prime Minister Mariano
Rajoy’s government to ask for more aid. Spain “would be daft” to ask
for a bailout on top of the 100 billion euros ($129 billion) for its banks if
it didn’t need it. European policy makers are at odds over Spain as Rajoy
stalls on whether to request more aid from the euro-area rescue funds and
potentially win European Central Bank help to lower borrowing costs. France is
pressing Spain to request help to contain the euro-area crisis almost three
years after it emerged in Greece, three people familiar with
negotiations said yesterday.
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