Europe may already have passed its biggest stress test. The euro has rallied 8 percent from a four-year low last month. Greece, Spain and Portugal have managed to sell 50 billion euros ($64 billion) of debt since May 10 when the need to save the single currency forced finance ministers to create a nearly $1 [...]

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Asian stocks and the won plunged to 10-month lows after a report that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il ordered his military to prepare for combat last week. The euro weakened and commodities declined on concern Europe’s debt crisis will spread. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index dropped 3.1 percent to 109.24 a 1:30 p.m. in Tokyo, set for [...]

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Investor Jim Rogers said Europe’s bailout of indebted nations to overcome the sovereign-debt crisis is just “another nail in the coffin” for the euro as higher spending increases the region’s debt. The 16-nation currency weakened for a second day against the dollar after rallying as much as 2.7 percent on May 10, when the governments of [...]

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Europe’s spreading debt crisis—combined with an overdue stock pullback and the prospect of the Federal Reserve withdrawing its economic support—added up to one thing Tuesday: Fear. As the Dow Jones industrial average tumbled more than 200 points and safe-haven moves for US Treasurys escalated, investors sought protection with the Chicago Board Options Exchange’s Volatility Index[VIX  23.84   3.65  (+18.08%)   ], which [...]

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Euro-region ministers agreed to a 110 billion-euro ($146 billion) rescue package for Greeceto prevent a default and stop the worst crisis in the currency’s 11-year history from spreading through the rest of the bloc. The first payment will be made before Greece’s next bond redemption on May 19, said Jean-Claude Juncker after chairing a meeting of euro-region [...]

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WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama on Thursday issued a fresh call to China to embrace a “market oriented” exchange rate for the yuan, saying such a move would help rebalance the global economy. Obama made his latest foray into the delicate US-China relationship in a major speech on trade, saying the world needed to rebalance [...]

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China’s yuan is facing increasing pressure to appreciate because of a widening interest-rate differential, the country’s top currency regulator said in a statement. Speculative capital is flowing into China disguised as foreign direct investment and trade accounts through “underground money shops,” Yi Gang, head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said at a briefing in Beijing [...]

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Greece’s pledge to ramp up planned budget-deficit cuts by half failed to yield commitments of financial assistance from Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, to help solve its financial crisis. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said a meeting tomorrow with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou won’t be “about aid commitments.” Her finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, said the deficit-reduction measures announced in [...]

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Australia’s economy grew last quarter at the fastest pace in almost two years, underscoring the central bank’s decision yesterday to boost borrowing costs for the fourth time in five meetings. Gross domestic product climbed 0.9 percent from the third quarter, when it gained a revised 0.3 percent, the Bureau of Statistics said in Sydney today. That [...]

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While the eyes of the world focus on Greece’s debt crisis, investors in Edinburgh are busy preparing for the U.K. to be next. Turcan Connell, which caters to rich families, expects the pound to lose between 20 percent and 30 percent against the dollar once investors turn their sights on Britain as the government sells [...]

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