TOP
STORIES:
Financial crisis: the printing press has reached its limits
- (www.telegraph.co.uk) The symposium has been
further devalued by the fact that many of the top European central bankers,
including Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, are still so
busy fire-fighting that they have failed to show up. If nothing else, the event
serves to highlight that five years after the crisis began, monetary policy is
still struggling to deliver meaningful solutions. Here in the UK, the
Government has put its faith in a combination of “fiscal conservatism and monetary
activism” to lift the economy out of its funk. In the event, government
spending has hardly been checked at all, while monetary activism has failed to
revive the economy as hoped. Output remains firmly stuck a full 4.3 per cent
below its pre-crisis peak.
If
Morgan Stanley Is Right, Europe Should Be Incredibly Nervous About That
Upcoming German Court Decision - (www.businessinsider.com)
September 12 is going to be a
huge day. For one thing it's the day the next iPhone will probably get revealed. And there's an
election in the Netherlands that day. And most importantly, a German court will
rule on whether the European bailout fund, the ESM, is compliant with the
German constitution. A rejection of the fund by the court has been seen as a
possible "tail risk" but Morgan Stanley's Elga Bartch says the odds
of a rejection is 40%! That's a really big chance of a negative blow to what's
seen as a decisive piece in the puzzle.
At pivotal moment, Bernanke low on economic ammo - (www.washingtonpost.com) Republicans are insisting that he refrainfrom
doing anything more to try to pump up economic growth. Democrats, who tend to be more reserved on the matter,
are demanding that he take new action. The truth, Bernanke has
said repeatedly, is that the Fed’s ability to change the direction of the
economy is limited, and it’s not clear the benefits of new measures
outweigh the potential costs. Economists say new Fed actions are likely to have
only a small effect on job creation. Bernanke doesn’t have control over the two
biggest factors affecting economic growth: how Congress and the president
handle the government’s spending and taxation choices, and how Europe’s leaders
respond to their continent’s crisis.
EASTWOOD:
WRONG ON JOBS - (money.cnn.com) Clint Eastwood claims there
are 23 million unemployed, but actual count is 12.8 million. Clint
Eastwood's biting criticism of President Obama was a big hit with the crowd at
the Republican National Convention. But his reading of the nation's
unemployment situation missed by a wide margin. Eastwood's speech on Thursday night
mocked supporters of the president like Oprah Winfrey, who cried the night Obama was elected four years ago. "I
haven't cried that hard since I found out that there are 23 million unemployed
people in this country," Eastwood said. "This administration hasn't
done enough to cure that."
But the
U.S. Labor Department, which puts out the official government jobs data, counts
12.8 million people as unemployed -- not 23 million.
Sixth-Largest Defense Company Breaking Up Months Before Pentagon Cuts - (www.businessinsider.com) It begins. Science Applications International Corporation — more commonly SAIC — is breaking up, dividing its businesses into two different publicly traded companies. The news comes after cuts to the Defense Budget stoked speculation that we'll see another round of mergers, buyouts, and industry realignment, just as happened in the early '90s and late Clinton administration. During that time, the Defense business consolidated due to the end of the Cold War. Now a shrinking Defense budget after the wars in the Middle East are kicking off a new series of industry change.
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