Europe’s white knight, China, is sticking to it’s guns, and promises to buy more European debt. With already averaging down on the PIIGS debt, China cannot abandon the already initiated trade, and will end up import bad debt, but that is a later problem. For now enjoy the rhetoric from Mr Wen;

He also repeated his assurance that China would remain a long-term investor in European sovereign debt, saying China would lend to those countries experiencing difficulty borrowing.

“China has no intention to pursue a trade surplus,” he told BBC television through a translator.

“What we want is to have balanced and sustainable growth of trade. At home we are going to further stimulate domestic demand and we are going to reduce our foreign trade surplus and our reliance on exports,” he said.

During his visit to Hungary Saturday, Wen said he was willing to buy a “certain amount” of Hungarian government bonds.

When asked if he planned to lend to others, Wen said: “We have done this for Hungary and we will do the same thing for other European countries.”

From the man who broke the Sterling, we now hear the Euro has reached a “reflexivity” point. Greece is the epicentre of what is going on in Europe, but the problems will for sure spread to other countries. Let’s see what country finally decides to leave the sinking Euro project?

Billionaire investor George Soros said it’s “probably inevitable” that a mechanism will have to be put in place to allow weaker euro-region economies to exit the single currency.

“We are on the verge of an economic collapse which starts, let’s say, in Greece, but it could easily spread,” Soros, 80, said at a panel discussion in Vienna today on whether liberal democracy is at risk inEurope. “The financial system remains extremely vulnerable.”

Concern Greek lawmakers will fail to pass austerity measures to ensure the next installment of the nation’s bailout is roiling global markets and pushed the euro to a record-low against the Swiss franc last week. Greece is one of three euro- region members to have sought international bailouts amid the sovereign debt crisis.

“I think most of us actually agree that” Europe’s crisis “is actually centered around the euro,” said Soros. “It’s a kind of financial crisis that is really developing. It’s foreseen. Most people realize it. It’s still developing. The authorities are actually engaged in buying time. And yet time is working against them,” he said.

The euro was created in 1999, with 11 member states – Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Finland, Austria, Portugal, Spain and Ireland. Greece was the 12th country to adopt the shared currency in 2001, while Estonia is the newest member of the euro region, joining this January.

Maybe Sweden has something to teach other nations when it comes to Economics? Beside the exotic midnight sun, it’s extremely organized and somewhat dull society, Sweden has during the last years proven to be the European Tiger ruled by the only Finance Minister with a ponytail. As our site is registered in Sweden, we are proud to bring you the recipe of a prosperous Economy. Washington Post reports on the Swedish wonder, although they forgot about the future, ie the Swedish deteriorating education.

This Scandinavian nation of 9 million people has accomplished what the United States, Britain and Japan can only dream of: Growing rapidly, creating jobs and gaining a competitive edge. The banks are lending, the housing market booming. The budget is balanced.

Sweden was far from immune to the global downturn of 2008-09. But unlike other countries, it is bouncing back. Its 5.5 percent growth rate last year trounces the 2.8 percent expansion in the United States and was stronger than any other developed nation in Europe. And compared with the United States, unemployment peaked lower (around 9 percent, compared with 10 percent) and has come down faster (it now stands near 7 percent, compared with 9 percent in the U.S.).

Some of the reasons for the Swedish success are as unique to the nation as its citizens’ predilection for Abba, pickled herring and minimalist furniture. But there are plenty of lessons for other countries as they struggle to find a pathway toward prosperity.

The overarching lesson the Swedes offer is this: When you have a financial crisis, and Sweden had a nasty one in the early 1990s, learn from it. Don’t simply muddle through and hope that growth will eventually return. Rather, address the underlying causes of the crisis to create an economic and financial system that will be more resilient when bad times return.

Here is what that means in practice. Call them Sweden’s five lessons for a crisis-stricken nation.

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Guardian reports;

We are not all in this together. The UK economy is flat, the US is weak and the Greek debt crisis, according to some commentators, is threatening another Lehman Brothers-style meltdown. But a new report shows the world’s wealthiest people are getting more prosperous – and more numerous – by the day.

The globe’s richest have now recouped the losses they suffered after the 2008 banking crisis. They are richer than ever, and there are more of them – nearly 11 million – than before the recession struck.

In the world of the well-heeled, the rich are referred to as “high net worth individuals” (HNWIs) and defined as people who have more than $1m (£620,000) of free cash.

According to the annual world wealth report by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini, the wealth of HNWIs around the world reached $42.7tn (£26.5tn) in 2010, rising nearly 10% in a year and surpassing the peak of $40.7tn reached in 2007, even as austerity budgets were implemented by many governments in the developed world.

The report also measures a category of “ultra-high net worth individuals” – those with at least $30m rattling around, looking for a home. The number of individuals in this super-rich bracket climbed 10% to a total of 103,000, and the total value of their investments jumped by 11.5% to $15tn, demonstrating that even among the rich, the richest get richer quicker. Altogether they represent less than 1% of the world’s HNWIs – but they speak for 36% of HNWI’s total wealth.

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With 28 countries involved, quite some people knew about the Big oil news of the week. Let the hunt on insider begin. Dow Jones reports;

U.S. commodity regulators are examining whether traders received early word of a decision to coordinate a release of global oil stockpiles ahead of Thursday’s announcement by the International Energy Agency, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Officials with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission as well as market participants have said trading was unusual in the oil futures market prior to the IEA’s announcement that it would release 60 million barrels of oil, the person said.

The CFTC is reviewing market data to find clues as to whether some traders may have received an advance tip on the IEA’s plan, the person said.

The IEA, a Paris-based agency that represents 28 of the world’s largest oil consuming nations, announced the move early Thursday, sending oil futures falling 4.6% to a four-month low of $91.02 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. ICE Brent futures saw an even steeper drop, declining by 6.1% to $107.26 a barrel.

Analysts and traders said they noticed irregular trading prior to the official release of the report, and beginning Thursday raised concerns that some traders may have heard of the decision early. Others in the market attributed the decline to weak U.S. jobs data and concerns about Greece’s debt crisis.

“Twenty-eight countries–it’s tough to keep a secret,” said Dominick Chirichella, analyst at the Energy Management Institute in New York. “I don’t know how you keep a secret from the oil market when there are that many countries involved.”

The source described the CFTC’s actions are a preliminary step. In cases of this type, the agency will often try to work with foreign regulators to determine if suspicious trading patterns originated in other countries outside of the CFTC’s jurisdiction.

A CFTC spokesman declined to comment.

“Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of the smaller ones.

The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organised political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature.

The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education).

It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.”

Albert Einstein, 1949

Below some historic reading by Hudson. As we know, history is always repeating itself.

This article was published in the NYT more than 20 years ago, forecasting precisely what has happened.

I attended the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington
last month. When the meetings ended, I was left with the impression that no further writedowns
would be forthcoming for Latin America’s debtor countries unless they followed the lead of Mexico.

To do this, countries like Brazil and Argentina would have to sell off their public utilities, some
potentially profitable industrial corporations and some service industries like airlines.
In the past, one met mostly bankers at these big international meetings. Now there are a lot of
lawyers.

For Latin America the foreclosure process has begun, but for the time being it is called privatization
or debt-for-equity swaps. Countries hoping to borrow more money from creditor-nation
governments, the I.M.F. and the World Bank, are being told to help themselves by relinquishing
ownership of their basic economic infrastructure.

In advocating this brave new world of privatizing hitherto public monopolies, these local investors
and their partners, the international banking and investment community, cite a number of truisms.
Private-sector managers will run enterprises more efficiently, the proponents of privatization say.
This argument has merit, as far as it goes. But it should be remembered that the troubled savings
and loan institutions in Texas were all privately run businesses.

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