Links 6/25/12

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I have spent the day in a fruitless search for hope.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-25/merkel-rejects-joint-euro-bonds-bills-with-all-eyes-on-germany.html

Chancellor Angela Merkel hardened her resistance to euro-area debt sharing to resolve the region’s financial crisis, setting Germany on a collision course with its allies at a summit of European leaders this week. Merkel, speaking to a conference in Berlin today as Spain announced it would formally seek aid for its banks, dismissed “euro bonds, euro bills and European deposit insurance with joint liability and much more” as “economically wrong and counterproductive,” saying that they ran against the German constitution.
“It’s not a bold prediction to say that in Brussels most eyes -- all eyes -- will be on Germany yet again,” Merkel said. “I say quite openly: when I think of the summit on Thursday I’m concerned that once again the discussion will be far too much about all kinds of ideas for joint liability and far too little about improved oversight and structural measures.”
The German chancellor will face an increasingly united bloc of euro-area nations at the summit as fellow leaders in France, Italy and Spain plus investors such as George Soros press her for more ambitious policies to help bring down borrowing costs across the 17-nation euro region. Soros urged Merkel to agree to a fund to buy Italian and Spanish bonds in return for those governments implementing budget cuts, or risk a “fiasco.”

‘Wrong Direction’

“Merkel has emerged as a strong leader,” the billionaire investor said in an interview in London. “Unfortunately, she has been leading Europe in the wrong direction.”
The euro and stocks fell today, with the Stoxx Europe 600 Index (SXXP) retreating 1.4 percent to 243.04 as of 5:21 p.m. in Berlin. The euro dropped 0.7 percent to $1.2483.
Merkel’s comments are also a rebuff to global partners from the U.S. to India and China, whose leaders have been pressing Germany to do more to stem the crisis. At the Group of 20 summit in Mexico last week, Merkel was among the euro-area leaders who pledged to “take all necessary measures to safeguard the integrity and stability” of the joint currency.
“Merkel is following a very careful strategy,” Eric Wand, a fixed-income strategist at Lloyds Banking Group Plc in London, said in a note today. First was the fiscal pact, which most EU countries are due to ratify in July, and then comes “extending Brussels control” over national budgets, he said.
For Merkel, that’s a building block toward “eventually accepting a debt-sharing solution,” he said. “Of course, more control to Brussels means some loss of sovereignty which, for now, the French seem unwilling to accept.”

Rome Talks

At a June 22 four-way summit meeting in Rome, Merkel faced a united front among her three interlocutors -- Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, French President Francois Hollande and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy -- on making the euro region’s rescue funds more flexible. She dismissed a Monti plan last week to use the funds -- the temporary European Financial Stability Facility or the permanent European Stability Mechanism -- to buy bonds, and spelled out her opposition to directly recapitalizing banks.
“There must not be an imbalance between liability and control,” she said today. “For instance, we would do a European deposit insurance immediately if it doesn’t lead to common liability but to improved oversight possibilities and standards.”
As she prepares to meet again with Hollande in Paris on June 27, on the eve of the EU summit, Merkel said that European leaders have to get rid of the “deficiencies” that developed when the economic and currency union was founded 20 years ago.
“Liability and control have to be in balance,” she said. “So the goal has to be a political union in which the standard is whatever is the best, not mediocrity.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Tony Czuczka in Berlin at aczuczka@bloomberg.net Patrick Donahue in Rome at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net"

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/06/links-62512.html

Monday, June 25, 2012

Links 6/25/12

Lonesome George, last member of species of Galápagos giant tortoise, dies Guardian (Chuck L)
Trending: Random clicks of kindness in an age of trolls Independent. The cat rescue photo is prominent, but still no story!
Stonehenge Was Monument Marking Unification of Britain Science Daily
Scientists developing device to ‘hack’ into brain of Stephen Hawking Telegraph (Chuck L)
In Documents on Pain Drug, Signs of Doubt and Deception New York Times
Google, The Smothers Brothers, and “The Freedom to Hear” Lauren Weinstein (Chuck L)
Australian banks most profitable in the world MacroBusiness
Shock at the BBC as reporters are told to start making money Independent. Lambert: Deceptive headline. If they want reporters to be marketers, what does that say? More insane managers regarding “human resources” as interchangeable parts.
Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi declared president of Egypt Guardian
Soros: We Have 3 Days to Avoid ‘Fiasco’ Bloomberg
Debt seniority and the Spanish bailout VoxEU
Stimulating Europe Triple Crisis
The Great Abdication Paul Krugman, New York Times
Romney Stares Uncomprehendingly At $1 Bill Onion
Mitt and the junk bond king Boston Globe. His history with Milken.
Shock as Nazi flag soars over Long Beach Jewish community Daily Mail (Chuck L)
Robert Shiller Goes Off The Deep End With His New Housing Proposal Clusterstock
Charlie Rose Endorses America is ‘Not Greatest Country’ View of Aaron Sorkin Show mcrTV (Swedish Lex)
How Christian clubs in schools turned into faith-based bullying MinnPost
Insight: In hours, caustic vapors wreaked quiet ruin on biggest U.S. refinery Reuters
JP Morgan: Eight Challenging Questions Global Economic Intersection
Bank chiefs enjoy double-digit pay rises Financial Times
Stabilizing prices is immoral Steve Waldman
US Government Backstops Most Derivatives masaccio, Firedoglake
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This is the best hope I have seen today.  The Euro is toast.

I know I should cut down to six cups a day.
I do use paper filters.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/having-your-coffee-and-enjoying-it-too/?hp

A disclaimer: I do not own stock in Starbucks nor, to my knowledge, in any other company that sells coffee or its accouterments. I last wrote about America’s most popular beverage four years ago, and the latest and largest study to date supports that earlier assessment of coffee’s health effects.
Although the new research, which involved more than 400,000 people in a 14-year observational study, still cannot prove cause and effect, the findings are consistent with other recent large studies.

Personal Health

Jane Brody on health and aging.

The findings were widely reported, but here’s the bottom line: When smoking and many other factors known to influence health and longevity were taken into account, coffee drinkers in the study were found to be living somewhat longer than abstainers. Further, the more coffee consumed each day — up to a point, at least — the greater the benefit to longevity.
The observed benefit of coffee drinking was not enormous — a death rate among coffee drinkers that was 10 percent to 15 percent lower than among abstainers. But the findings are certainly reassuring, and given how many Americans drink coffee, the numbers of lives affected may be quite large.
Updating the Evidence
In decades past, experts repeatedly warned that a coffee habit could harm health and shorten lives. And, indeed, the new study did find that when the data were adjusted only for age, the risk of death was greater among coffee drinkers.
But when the researchers took into account other health-related characteristics among the participants, like smoking, alcohol use, meat consumption, physical activity and body mass index, those who regularly drank coffee lived longer.
“Coffee drinkers shouldn’t be worried,” said Neal Freedman, an epidemiologist at the National Cancer Institute who directed the study. “Their risk is quite similar to that of nondrinkers.”
Coffee drinkers who were relatively healthy when the study began were less likely than nondrinkers to die of heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, diabetes, infections, injuries and accidents.
The study, published in May in The New England Journal of Medicine, examined data on 402,260 adults in the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study. They were ages 50 to 71 and free of heart disease, cancer and stroke when the study began in 1995. By 2008, 52,515 had died. Dr. Freedman and his co-authors examined why they died in relation to how much coffee they said they drank when the study began.
The risk of death gradually dropped as the number of cups the participants drank increased to four or five. At six cups or more each day, there was a slight rise in death risk, compared with that at four or five cups. But the chances of death remained lower than among people who drank no coffee.
Reflecting practices of the mid-1990s, the researchers considered a cup of coffee to be 8 to 10 ounces. The gargantuan cups now often served would count as more than one cup, Dr. Freedman said. Several of these extra-large cups can cause restlessness, irritability, sleeplessness and anxiety (and might enable me to fly without an airplane).
Contrary to previous belief, at usual levels of consumption, coffee is not any more of a diuretic than the equivalent amount of water. Up to six cups a day can be counted toward one’s recommended liquid intake.
Effects on Health
Coffee is a complex substance that contains more than 1,000 compounds that may affect health. Caffeine, a stimulant, is the most studied and sought after. The amounts in coffee can vary greatly, from about 70 milligrams in a shot of espresso to about 100 milligrams in eight ounces of brewed coffee.
But there can be wide variability in caffeine levels, even in similar beverages. As Jane V. Higdon and Balz Frei of Oregon State University reported in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, when the same type of coffee was purchased from the same store on six different days, the caffeine content varied from 130 milligrams to 282 milligrams in an eight-ounce cup.
Nor is caffeine is the only compound in coffee important to health. In the new study, little or no difference was found in death rates among those who drank predominantly caffeinated coffee or decaffeinated coffee. Other substances — like antioxidants and polyphenols — probably also play a health-related role, the researchers noted.
Their findings should reassure people concerned about possible harm from substances long used to remove caffeine from coffee. Fear of these chemicals prompted many manufacturers to switch to the Swiss water method for removing caffeine.
But how coffee is brewed can make a health difference. Two prominent chemicals in coffee beans, cafestol and kahweol, are known to raise blood levels of cholesterol and especially artery-damaging LDL cholesterol. These substances are removed when coffee is prepared through a filter, but remain in espresso, French press and boiled coffee. Single-serving coffee pods, like those used in a Keurig, contain filters.
Even though coffee can cause a temporary rise in blood pressure, the new study, like those before it, found the risk of heart disease to be lower among otherwise healthy coffee drinkers. Other benefits suggested by recent studies include a reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes, liver disease and Parkinson’s disease. Some research has found a reduced risk of depression, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease among coffee drinkers.
People who engage in strenuous physical activities can also benefit, but only if their coffee contains caffeine, which helps muscles use fatty acids for energy and blunts the effect of adenosine, extending the time before muscles fatigue. Post-exercise soreness is also reduced and recovery time shortened.
Whether coffee poses a risk to pregnant women remains controversial. A causal relationship between coffee consumption and miscarriage has not been demonstrated at caffeine intakes of less than 300 milligrams a day, but some studies have found increased risk of low birth weight associated with consuming more than 150 milligrams a day.
Keep in mind, too, that caffeine is a drug. Some medications, including Tagamet, Diflucan, Luvox, Mexitil, estrogens and antibiotics like Cipro and Levaquin, interfere with the metabolism of caffeine and can increase its effects.
In other cases, caffeine can enhance the effect of drugs like aspirin and acetaminophen (a benefit for pain relief). Caffeine can be toxic if used with prescribed doses of the antipsychotic medication clozapine."


















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