Euro area finance ministers meeting this week need to boost the firepower of the European stability funds to at least one trillion euros, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría said today.

The current level of commitment to the rescue funds is not enough to restore market confidence, he said. A credible financial firewall will provide governments with the breathing space they need to focus crucially on revitalising Europe’s economic growth and competitiveness.

TOWARDS GROWTH-FRIENDLY CONSOLIDATION AND JOB-FRIENDLY GROWTH

Over recent months, there have been tentative signs of economic stabilisation but financial market tensions continue to dampen economic activity and uncertainty remains high. Governments are undertaking strong efforts to correct budgetary imbalances on a sustainable basis but further efforts are needed to promote growth and employment. There are no quick fixes. Our action must be determined, persistent and broad-based. We must do more to get Europe out of the crisis.

The GHOS endorsed the Committee's comprehensive approach to monitoring and reviewing implementation of the Basel regulatory framework. GHOS Chairman and Governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King noted that "the focus on implementation represents a significant new direction for the Basel Committee. The level of scrutiny and transparency applied to the manner in which countries implement the rules the Committee has developed and agreed will help ensure full, timely and consistent implementation of the international minimum requirements".

Inside the French ambassador's 19-bedroom mansion, finance ministers and central bankers from the world's largest economies heard Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then-head of the International Monetary Fund, deliver an ultimatum. Greece, the country that triggered the euro-zone debt crisis, would need a much bigger bailout than planned, Mr. Strauss-Kahn said. Unless Europe coughed up extra cash, the IMF, which a year earlier had agreed to share the burden with European countries, wouldn't release any more aid for Athens.

The European Union and the euro area have done much over the past 18 months to improve economic governance and adopt new measures in response to the sovereign debt crisis. However, market tensions in the euro area have increased, and we need to step up our efforts to address the current challenges. Today we agreed to move towards a stronger economic union. This implies action in two directions:

- a new fiscal compact and strengthened economic policy coordination;

- the development of our stabilisation tools to face short term challenges.

Brussels, 23 November 2011

European Commission Green Paper on the feasibility of introducing Stability Bonds

Stability bonds. That is the new moniker given by the European Commission to euro bonds as it moves toward presenting its most definitive proposal yet for the debt pooling measure on Wednesday.

Indeed, European Economic and Monetary Affairs Commission Olli Rehn was in Berlin on Tuesday to tout Brussels' three-option studyon how bonds issued jointly by the 17 euro-zone member states could help stem the debt crisis.

Niall Ferguson, Professor of History at Harvard University, has written a tendentious new book, “Civilization,” which asserts, with similar certainty, that we are now living through “the end of 500 years of Western predominance,” that while China is on the rise, the question is not whether East and West will clash, but whether “the weaker” — that is, the United States and Europe — “will tip over from weakness to outright collapse.”

This is the most remarkable thing of all: a giant leap forward for, or perhaps even the successful culmination of, the Goldman Sachs Project.

Read the article here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/what-pr...

The present writer took up his Eurostat post in March 1991, right after Desert Shield. He was told then that Eurostat "had no right" to publish economic analyses and those instructions were repeated from time to time ever since. No Eurostat publication that he has seen contained any fruits of the officially forbidden research.

GDP increased by 0.2% in both the euro area (EA17) and the EU27 during the third quarter of 2011, compared with the previous quarter, according to flash estimates published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

In the second quarter of 2011, growth rates were +0.2% in both zones.

Compared with the same quarter of the previous year, seasonally adjusted GDP increased by 1.4% in both zones in the third quarter of 2011, after +1.6% in the euro area and +1.7% in the EU27 in the previous quarter.

Five US banks have released some data (SEC filings) of their exposure to PIIGS.

Source WSJ

Commission Vice-President for Economic and Monetary Affairs Olli Rehn said: "Growth has stalled in Europe, and there is a risk of a new recession. While jobs are increasing in some member states, no real improvement is forecast in the unemployment situation in the EU as a whole. The key for the resumption of growth and job creation is restoring confidence in fiscal sustainability and in the financial system and speeding up reforms to enhance Europe's growth potential. There is a broad consensus on the necessary policy action. What we need now is unwavering implementation. On my part, I will start using the new rules of economic governance from Day one."

Lenders increased overnight deposits at the European Central Bank to the highest level in more than 16 months.

Banks parked 299 billion euros ($412 billion) with the Frankfurt-based ECB yesterday, up from 288 billion euros on Nov. 4. That’s the most since June 30, 2010, and compares with a year-to-date average of 71 billion euros.

Yesterday, Giorgos Papandreou was at the center stage forRead more