Treasuries tumbled the most in six weeks and bonds dropped from Australia to Japan after European policy makers announced an unprecedented package of loans and securities purchases to rescue the euro.

See original here: 
U.S., Australian Bonds Tumble as Europe Arranges Rescue Package

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s approval rating dropped to its lowest since he took office in 2007 and his Labor party stands to lose if an election was called now, according to an opinion poll.

Go here to see the original: 
Rudd’s Rating Falls to Record Low in Australian Poll (Update1)

From the ECB: ECB decides on measures to address severe tensions in financial markets The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) decided on several measures to address the severe tensions in certain market segments which are hampering the monetary policy transmission mechanism and thereby the effective conduct of monetary policy oriented towards price stability in the medium term. The measures will not affect the stance of monetary policy. In view of the current exceptional circumstances prevailing in the market, the Governing Council decided: 1.To conduct interventions in the euro area public and private debt securities markets (Securities Markets Programme) to ensure depth and liquidity in those market segments which are dysfunctional

Read more from the original source: 
ECB To Intervene in Euro-Zone Debt Markets, Fed Re-opens Swaps

The Las Vegas Review Journal’s Vin Suprynowicz writes that compulsion systems lead to widespread poverty, desperation, starvation and slavery, and worries that America is headed that way. Join the discussion and post a comment Related posts: Rothbard predicts Obamanomics End (Wall Street) Welfare As We Know It Africans to Bono: “For God’s Sake Please Stop!”

Read more: 
Government should do nothing

Not much information this morning. The European Union finance ministers are meeting in Brussels and a press briefing is scheduled for noon ET (6 PM Brussels). Some finance minister comments via Reuters: EU finance ministers’ meeting on crisis mechanism (ht Counterpointer) From Finnish Finance Minister Jyrki Katainen speaking in Helsinki: “The situation in the financial markets has gone in a very bad direction, even though the Greek situation was brought under control.” “Now we have to do everything we can to bring stability in time.” “The alternative is still the same as when we talked about Greece: the threat of a serious bank crisis.” Should a banking crisis occur: “We know what would happen

Read the original: 
EU Press Briefing at Noon ET

Recently, news reported that “Investors in US, UK and China were very confident that Indian economy will show a positive growth. However Indian HNIs felt.

Read more from the original source:
Indian HNIs are more pessimistic about economic growth of India …

by Edward Hugh: Barcelona Well it is now official – or at least as official as it is going to get: the Spanish economy sneaked back into growth by a short head during the first three months of this year.

See the rest here:
Spain Emerges From Recession?

This graph shows the duration of unemployment as a percent of the civilian labor force. The graph shows the number of unemployed in four categories as provided by the BLS: less than 5 week, 6 to 14 weeks, 15 to 26 weeks, and 27 weeks or more

Here is the original post: 
Duration of Unemployment

From Bloomberg: EU to Set Up Fund to Prevent Spread of Greek Crisis European leaders agreed to set up an emergency fund … European officials declined to disclose the size of the stabilization fund, to be made up of money borrowed by the European Union’s central authorities with guarantees by national governments. Finance ministers will meet at 3 p.m

See more here: 
EU to Create Stabilization Fund, Details on Sunday

The European Union has announced an agreement among heads of state to address the mounting sovereign debt crisis. Here ’s Commission President Barroso’s statement. The meat of the announcement is the following: First the Commission will present a concrete proposal for a European Stabilisation Mechanism to preserve financial stability in Europe

Read more from the original source: 
European Stabilisation Mechanism Announced

Note: This earlier post has summaries of three major stories today: Europe, market glitch, and employment report. This is an unofficial list of Problem Banks compiled only from public sources. Here is the unofficial problem bank list for May 7, 2010

See the original post: 
Unofficial Problem Bank List May 7, 2010

Intravenous cash Injections of capital Could not save this bank One thousand point drop Ten thousand banks may yet fail Is it time for gold? by Soylent Green is People From the FDIC: First Federal Bank of Florida, Lake City, Florida, Assumes All of the Deposits of The Bank of Bonifay, Bonifay, Florida Bank of Bonifay, Bonifay, Florida, was closed today by the Florida Office of Financial Regulation, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver

Here is the original:
Bank Failures #65 & 66: Florida and Minnesota

From the National Multi Housing Council (NMHC): Apartment Industry Shows Widespread Improvement According to NMHC Quarterly Survey of Market Conditions The Market Tightness Index, which measures changes in occupancy rates and/or rents, rose sharply from 38 to 81. This was the highest figure in nearly four years

See the original post: 
NMHC Quarterly Survey: Apartment Market Conditions Tighten

Here are a couple more graphs based on data in the employment report … Temporary Help From the BLS report : Temporary help services continued to add jobs (26,000); employment in this industry has increased by 330,000 since September 2009

More: 
Temporary Help and Diffusion Index

Here are a few more graphs based on the employment report … Employment-Population Ratio The Employment-Population ratio increased to 58.8% in April (from 58.6% in March), after plunging since the start of the recession

Read the original here:
Employment-Population Ratio, Part Time Workers, Unemployed over 26 Weeks

I guess Colm has better things to be doing then putting links up on blogs but for those of you who haven’t seen it, Mr. McCarthy’s column in today’s Irish Times makes for interesting reading.

Go here to read the rest:
McCarthy on Greece and Ireland

Two months ago, I wrote , The standard forecast is, “employment has been less than what we expected, so let’s assume it will continue to be less than expected.” My forecast is that the recalculation is just getting started, and we will probably see employment growth of 200,000 jobs a month, or perhaps more, for the next year.

See original here: 
The Minsky-Jones Forecast Looks Good

Amid all the bond (and now equity) market excitement, it’s worth noting some economic news from home that’s not so bad and some news from abroad that’s positively good. Not so bad is today’s Live Register release which shows the standardised unemployment rate steady at 13.4% (though this is subject to all the usual caveats about whether this claims based measure is accurately capturing the underlying trends in joblessness) while the retail sales figures show some sign of stabilisation

Continued here:
April Live Register, March Retail Sales

From the BLS : Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 290,000 in April, the unemployment rate edged up to 9.9 percent, and the labor force increased sharply, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Click on graph for larger image.

Read more from the original source:
April Employment Report: 290K Jobs Added, 9.9% Unemployment Rate

October 22-23, 2010 Louisville, Kentucky Conference Conveners: Manisha Sinha (University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Departments of Afro-American Studies and History) Kevin Barksdale (Marshall University, Department of History) The Filson Institute for the Advanced Study of the Ohio Valley and the Upper South proposes a two-day academic conference to examine calls for secession or disunion in the United States from the Revolutionary era to the Civil War. The conference, which takes place in Louisville, Kentucky, at The Filson Historical Society, marks the 150th anniversary of South Carolina’s secession.

See the original post here:
Secessions: From the American Revolution to Civil War

Toshiba Corp., the world’s second- biggest maker of flash memory chips, forecast its first annual profit in three years, helped by demand for semiconductors that store data in mobile phones and other consumer electronics.

Here is the original:
Toshiba Forecasts First Profit in Three Years

It’s political session, and I know this because my own neighborhood is festooned with political signs that say things like: Joe STEVENS District Attorney Mark MAYBERRY Family Judge And so on, but they do not just say this once. If you are fan of STEVENS or MAYBERRY you apparently see the need to post not just one or two sign but ten or twenty of them on your property, creating negative externalities for all to see

Here is the original: 
Democracy Takes Too Many Lunch Hours

The comedy of errors continues. From a recent Irish Times article by the forensic and understated Colm Keena: “Lenihan said he was going to seek a cap of 500,000 euro on the salaries of the chief executives of Bank of Ireland and AIB… When the then governor of the Bank of Ireland wrote to Lenihan about Boucher’s pay arrangements, he suggested pay of 500,000 euro and a “pension cash allowance” of 123,000 euro. The Minister did not want the new chief executive getting any allowance that had been criticised in the (Covered Institution Remuneration Oversight) Committee report, and the amount ended up being rolled into a salary of 623,000 euro.

Here is the original post: 
More on Bank Executive Pay

“There’s a fine line between clever and stupid,” David St. Hubbins once said. Sam Kazman and Hans Bader, two lawyers with the Competitive Enterprise Institute , thought they were being clever when they prayed to the Gods of the Federal Trade Commission to smite General Motors for spreading blasphemy in its recent television advertising: The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) hereby requests that the FTC investigate a television advertising campaign by General Motors Company (GM) entitled “GM Repaid Government Loan Ahead of Schedule.” In its ad, GM’s Chairman and CEO, Ed Whitacre, declares that “we have repaid our government loan in full, with interest, five years ahead of the original schedule.” That claim gives the false impression that GM has used its own funds to pay back all the bailout money that it received from the federal government

Read more:
CEI Abandons Free Market Principles for Publicity Stunt

This afternoon, I’m scheduled to join a press call with Simon Johnson and two Senators discussing a proposed amendment to the financial reform bill. Simon and I have been in alignment since the day we “debated” the issue of nationalizing the then-insolvent banks. I was supposed to be against nationalizing banks, but I thought for some reason they were talking about solvent banks

Read the original:
Some Notes on Financial Reform