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STORIES:
Worst Carry Trades Show Central Banks Reaching Stimulus Limits
- (www.bloomberg.com) The $4 trillion-a-day
foreign- exchange market is losing confidence in central banks’ abilities to
boost a struggling world economy.
Rather
than sparking bets on growth, the JPMorgan Chase & Co. G7 Volatility Index (MXWD), which doubled in 2008 before
policy makers employed extraordinary measures to address faltering global
expansion, has dropped to a five-year low. While small foreign-exchange swings
historically favor the strategy of borrowing in low-yielding currencies to buy
those with higher returns, a UBS AG index that tracks profits from the
so-called carry trade has fallen to the lowest level since 2011.
Germany
Grumbles as UK Waffles on EU Integration - (www.cnbc.com)
Until recently, German
officials tended to down play divisions with Britain when pressed about its
semi-detached stance on Europe. Not any more. Now they tend to make their
irritation plain. "If someone wants to leave, you
can't stop them," said one senior German official, summing up a view in
Berlin that the door is open if Britain really wants to quit the European
Union. While Angela Merkel has largely overcome Eurosceptic qualms on the fringes
of her center-right coalition, Britain's David Cameron — never a committed
European in Berlin's view — appears to be bowing to the isolationist instincts
of the bulk of his Conservative lawmakers.
Greece's
Extreme Right Strengthens as Economy Sinks - (www.cnbc.com)
Ali Rahimi was enjoying a
warm Greek evening, chatting away with two friends, when a mob of 15 people
approached and asked where they were from. "I told them that I am from
Afghanistan and they said that it is time for me to go back to my
country," the 28-year-old asylum-seeker told NBC News. Rahimi attempted to
run away but was cornered, beaten, hit over the head with a bottle and stabbed
in the chest and back by three assailants in the entryway of his Athens
apartment building. "When police arrived they called an ambulance, but
then told me that they could not help me any further and left," Rahimi
recalled, explaining how he only realized how serious his injuries were after
spotting blood running out from under his T-shirt during the brutal attack on
Sept. 17, 2011.
GE, McDonald's give Wall Street a black eye on '87 crash date - (www.reuters.com)
Stocks ended the week on
Friday with their worst day since late June after Dowcomponents
General Electric and McDonald's, both barometers of the overall economy's
health, added to a disappointing earnings season. Technology shares kept up a
pattern of recent weakness, hurt by anemic results from Microsoft (MSFT.O) and another losing day for Google (GOOG.O). The Nasdaq closed
down 2.2 percent. For the Dow, Friday's slide marked its biggest loss since
June 21 - with the sell-off coming on the 25th anniversary of Black Monday,
when the Dow plunged 22.6 percent in its worst single-day percentage drop ever.
OBAMA'S
ENERGY RECORD - (money.cnn.com) Of the 63 firms that got
significant government funding, five have gone bankrupt. President Obama
is getting hammered for funding renewable energy companies that have since gone
belly up. During the first presidential debate, Mitt Romney said half of the
companies Obama funded in the first two years through the program that
supported Solyndra went bankrupt. That is true, in terms of that specific
program, for just those two years. But a spokesman for the Energy Department
said that agency has dozens of programs that funded over 1,300 companies in the
renewable energy space, and that less than 1% have gone bankrupt -- also true. So
just how many federally-funded energy companies have failed? A total of five
have gone bankrupt, according to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
All of the failed companies that the Committee identified came from just two
programs that received the most significant dollar amounts from the Department
of Energy.
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