Long term inflation consistency here…

“Right now there are no talks. There will be consultations with the EU and the IMF to determine where we stand and then we’ll see. It (negotiations) has again become complicated with the new demands over the coupon,” said a person with direct knowledge of the talks.”

Jan 20 (IFR) – European banks are preparing for a potential worsening of the region’s sovereign and banking crisis, with many firms stockpiling cash and cutting back on loans to new clients as they seek to protect themselves against a possible seizing-up of financial markets.

Faced with 650 billion euros of debt coming due this year – almost 40 percent of which matures before the end of March – lenders are choosing to build up a cash cushion to ensure they can cover redemptions, creating a squeeze on the wider economy in the process.

Such hoarding illustrates the nervousness of lenders even after the European Central Bank injected 489 billion euros of cash into the banking system in December. Cash deposits at the ECB have ballooned since then, reaching a record 528 billion euros this week – higher than after the Lehman Brothers collapse.

“The big concern is that things might get worse,” said Bernd Hartwig, treasury manager at Nord/LB. “Political decisions are taking too long and most banks are building up liquidity just in case something happens. They are very worried that a new crisis could be a bigger than 2008.”

System-wide hoarding is the reverse of what happened the last time central banks injected hundreds of billions of long-term money into the system. Then, banks moved quickly to put the money to work and generate returns, sparking bond and equity market rallies – and economic growth.

The US Federal Reserve almost trebled the size of its balance sheet to more than $2 trillion in the months after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, pumping cash into the banking system through programs such as the Term Auction Facility. The ECB grew its balance sheet by about a quarter in that time.

Seems that way since bankers were in the know. Why then have they not been prosecuted ?

What a convoluted pretzel of politics and people….

Fun times…NOT!…

One final meal after he knew he screwed himself and everyone else…

(via  CNN)

_______________________

The captain of the Costa Concordia ordered dinner for himself and a woman after the ship struck rocks off Italy’s coast, a cook from the ship told a Filipino television station.

In an interview with GMA Network, cook Rogelio Barista said Capt. Francesco Schettino ordered dinner less than an hour after the accident.

“We wondered what was going on. … At that time, we really felt something was wrong. … The stuff in the kitchen was falling off shelves and we realized how grave the situation was,” Barista told GMA.

Schettino ordered dinner around 10:30 p.m. Friday, Barista said. Authorities say the ship struck the rocks at 9:41 p.m.

“I have had 12 years of experience as a cook on a cruise ship. … I have even witnessed fires, so I wasn’t that scared,” Barista said. “But I did wonder, though, what the captain was doing … why was he still there.”

The ship hit rocks off the coast of the Italian island of Giglio on Friday night.

At least 11 people are known to have died in the disaster, and 21 are still missing, according to the Italian Crisis Unit.

Criticism from both Costa Cruises and the authorities has focused so far on Schettino, who is under house arrest and facing possible charges of manslaughter, shipwreck and abandoning ship.

Coast guard records published Thursday by an Italian newspaper pile further pressure on the captain of the Concordia and his officers, suggesting that the authorities first became aware of the crash from a friend of the mother of a passenger about 15 minutes after the ship hit rocks.

Schettino’s brother-in-law defended him in an Italian newspaper Thursday.

Schettino “managed to avoid a tragedy — it could have been worse,” Maurilio Russo said in Corriere della Sera.

And he denied that the captain had abandoned ship.

“He was not running away, he came down (from the ship) to survey the damage,” Russo said.

(via NY POST)

GIGLIO, Italy — The search for bodies on the wreck of the Costa Concordia resumed Thursday amid reports that a mystery blonde woman was on the bridge alongside the ship’s captain before the liner crashed off the Italian coast.

The woman is believed to be Domnica Cemortan, a 25-year-old Moldovan, thought to be the same female seen dining with Captain Francesco Schettino at around 9 p.m. last Friday, just under half an hour before the disaster, Italian newspaper Il Secolo reported.

Cemortan, who may have been a guest of either Schettino or another officer, or a ship employee, may emerge as a key witness to Friday night’s events, but Italian prosecutors will neither confirm nor deny the reports.

Read more: http://trade.cc/aaqm

[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9qVe_btwIQ 450 300]

Good commentary here

Everybody needs a little coin these days….

There are rumors that at this point the Captain had already escaped the ship, climbed over the rocks, and hailed a taxi to get away from the scene.

(via)

A secret dossier detailing plans for policing this summer’s London Olympics was left on a train.

The file, which could have provided terrorists planning an attack with invaluable data, was lost by a cop.

A commuter found it and handed it to The Sun, who returned the file to the police, the newspaper reported Tuesday.

The chief inspector in Scotland Yard’s Territorial Policing branch is said to be “hugely embarrassed” by the potentially serious blunder.

“Restricted” files spell out the security plans in place at the sites of events and provide minutes of top-level meetings in which ways to beat terrorists were discussed.

The dossier contains dates and details of pre-Olympics rehearsals, explains emergency lockdown procedures and sets out plans to avoid traffic congestion.

It also reports at length on damning complaints from officers about the radios they will use during the Olympics.

The documents were found by a commuter on a train in Dartford in Kent, southeastern England, on Jan. 5.

“I couldn’t believe any policeman could have left this on a train. It’s a worry,” the unnamed commuter said.

London’s Metropolitan Police played down the incident, saying the files were not thought to be operationally sensitive.

A spokeswoman said, “An officer lost his bag containing a number of documents. He reported the loss. The Directorate of Professional Standards have been informed, as is routine.”

BRUSSELS (AP) — Rating agency Standard & Poor’s said Monday it has downgraded the creditworthiness of the eurozone’s rescue fund by one notch to AA+, putting the fund’s ability to raise cheap bailout money at risk.

The downgrade follows ratings cuts for AAA-rated France and Austria, whose financial guarantees were key to the creditworthiness of the European Financial Stability Facility.

“The downgrade to ‘AA+’ by only one credit agency will not reduce (the) EFSF’s lending capacity of euro440 billion,” Klaus Regling, the fund’s chief executive officer, said in a statement.

S&P had warned in December that it would cut the rating of the euro440 billion EFSF in line with the downgrades of any AAA country.

This would be easy, except that lots of these governments have mandated “minimum investment grade” status for investment funds, when their ratings were good, to monopolize investment cash flows into their bonds, which is part of the reason they have so much debt to begin with.

Nobody likes to rely on the ratings agencies when they’re not in favor and their debt is being forced to sell off because of their own regulations. But I notice none of these officials were complaining when they were the only game in town.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — European Central Bank head Mario Draghi says it’s time for investors and regulators to rely less on ratings agencies.

Draghi, speaking as the chair of the European Systemic Risk Board, told a committee of the European Parliament that “one needs to ask how important are these ratings for the marketplace, for the regulators and for investors.”

Draghi noted that downgrades had largely been anticipated by markets. Standard & Poor’s downgraded nine eurozone governments on Friday, but markets remained calm on Monday.

He said he couldn’t comment on particular ratings, but added that “as regulators we should learn to do without ratings.”

Or people could use ratings as just one piece of information “rather than spend too much time on what they say or do.”

..

LONDON/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission launched a review of its policy on bank structure on Monday, a move that follows hard on the heels of Britain’s radical plan to ring-fence the assets of savers against losses from risky investment banking.

The review will be headed by Erkki Liikanen, the governor of the Bank of Finland, the commission said, kicking off a process that could herald more intrusive regulation and upset governments that want to maintain responsibility for their own banks.

So far, new European Union rules for banks have been limited to setting the amount of capital they should keep to cover losses or to regulating how they trade.

But Michel Barnier, the French commissioner in charge of financial reform for the EU, is pushing for ever deeper reforms.

He outlined plans last year for the committee to look at, among other things, Britain’s plans to ring fence the deposit-taking arms of its domestic banks with extra capital.

“I expect this group to make all the recommendations as regards the structure of EU banks it deems necessary to strengthen financial stability and enable banks to fully play their role in favor of the Single Market and European growth,” Barnier said in a statement.

BERLIN/MADRID (Reuters) – Germany, the only major euro zone member to retain a top-notch credit rating, refused on Monday to consider boosting the bloc’s rescue fund, while Greece was under pressure to urgently break a deadlock in debt swap talks if it is to avoid an unruly default.

European leaders vowed to press ahead with a fiscal pact for stricter budget discipline and hasten the launch of a permanent bailout fund for the 17-nation euro area, the European Stability Mechanism, in the light of Standard & Poor’s move last Friday.

The downgrading of France, Austria, Italy and Spain in particular means the European Financial Stability Facility risks losing its AAA rating or having less money to lend, unless remaining triple-A nations raise their guarantees, euro zone officials said.

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert told reporters: “The government has no reason to believe that the volume of guarantees that the EFSF has now should not be sufficient to fulfill its current obligations.

ATHENS/LONDON (Reuters) – Greece’s private sector creditors warned on Monday that the Athens government must urgently break a deadlock in debt swap talks triggered by “unreasonable” demands from international lenders if is to avoid a disorderly default.

Barely a month after an injection of bailout funds helped to avert bankruptcy, Greece is back at the centre of the euro zone crisis as fears of a default and a subsequent euro zone exit overshadow a mass credit downgrade of euro zone countries.

Cash-strapped Athens needs a deal with the private sector within days to avoid going bankrupt when 14.5 billion euros of bond redemptions fall due in late March.

But talks with its creditor banks broke down on Friday over the interest rate on new bonds Greece will offer and a plan to enforce investor losses. Negotiations were suspended until Wednesday, and Athens sent senior officials to Washington to consult with the International Monetary Fund.

With a growing number of experts — including a senior Standard & Poor’s official — warning a Greek default was on the cards, the country’s creditors expressed alarm.