- EU Frustration Mounts as Greeks Try to Bypass Aid Process. (video) Euro-area finance ministers voiced their frustration with Greece after Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras tried to bypass their veto on financial aid with an appeal to Angela Merkel. With Greece running out of money and stalling over commitments to reform, euro-zone finance chiefs meeting in Riga, Latvia, Friday said the country’s authorities still haven’t shown sufficient progress on plans to revamp the economy to justify a loan payout. “I demand very urgently that we get results on the table,” Austrian Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling said before sitting down for talks. “If you follow the media of the past days you hear time and again that ‘Tsipras says’ and ‘Tsipras thinks’, so apparently this has been moved to leaders’ level.”
- Merkel Calls for Calm as Greek Talks Descend Into Name-Calling. German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for calm after a euro-area finance ministers’ meeting on Greece descended into acrimony and name-calling. Finance chiefs meeting in Riga, Latvia, on Friday, let loose at Yanis Varoufakis, their Greek counterpart, as they ruled out making a partial aid payment in exchange for a narrower program of reforms. “It’s important that we show understanding for each other,” Merkel told a crowd at a campaign event in Bremerhaven, Germany. While all sides are working toward a deal, “we don’t know if this will work out,” she said.
- Ukraine’s President Says Martial Law Ready If Troops Attacked. President Petro Poroshenko said he’s ready to place Ukraine under martial law if his army is attacked in the embattled eastern part of the country. “If Ukrainian troops are attacked, we can do everything to introduce martial law,” Poroshenko said in an interview with the Ukraina television channel on Friday. “I will submit to parliament a corresponding bill and the country will very quickly move to a military footing.”
- China to Crack Down on Stock Manipulation as Market Soars. China’s securities regulator started a campaign to crack down on stock-market manipulation and insider trading, the latest effort to reduce risks as an equities boom lures a record number of novice investors. The China Securities Regulatory Commission will target trading by brokerage employees using non-public information, and market manipulation, including of futures prices, the CSRC said in a Friday statement on its website. The regulator also cited insider trading in over-the-counter markets and accounting fraud in mergers and acquisition.
- Italian Bonds Decline as Greece ‘Wide Differences’ Unresolved. Italian government bonds fell as the head of the euro-area finance ministers’ group ruled out making a partial aid payment in exchange for a narrower program of economic reforms, leaving “wide differences” unresolved.
- Pimco’s Kiesel Sees Bubble in $3 Trillion of Negative-Yield Debt. Forget high-yield bonds. The real froth in markets can be found in the swelling pool of negative-yielding government debt from Europe to Japan. That’s according to Mark Kiesel, chief investment officer for global credit at Pacific Investment Management Co., who’s increasingly wary of investors paying governments from Spain to Switzerland to lend to them.
- European Stocks Extend Weekly Advance as HSBC, Miners Climb. European stocks rebounded, extending weekly gains, as HSBC Holdings Plc led banks higher and companies including Renault SA rose on sales and earnings releases. HSBC climbed 2.9 percent after saying that it has started a review into moving its headquarters from the U.K. Renault added 3.7 percent after reporting quarterly sales rose 14 percent. Glencore Plc, BHP Billiton Ltd. and Rio Tinto Group led commodity producers to the biggest gain of the 19 industry groups on the Stoxx Europe 600 Index as iron ore advanced into a bull market. AstraZeneca Plc declined 1.7 percent after posting lower first-quarter earnings. The Stoxx 600 rose 0.3 percent to 408.42 at the close of trading, for a weekly gain of 1.2 percent.
- Saudi Arabia Has a Solution to the Global Oil Glut Problem. Saudi Arabia has a response to the global surplus of oil: Raise output to near-record levels and then pump even more. The world’s biggest oil exporter, having abandoned last year its role of keeping global markets in balance, now has incentive to maximize output and undermine rival producers by using its reserve capacity, according to Citigroup Inc. and UBS AG. Just meeting its own domestic demand this summer will require a lot more fuel, others estimate.
- Some of the flash crash story just makes no sense. The first question that arises from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's case against Navinder Singh Sarao is: Why did it take them five years to bring it? A guy living with his parents next to London's Heathrow Airport enters a lot of big, phony orders to sell U.S. stock market futures; the market promptly collapses on May 6, 2010; it takes five years for the army of U.S. financial regulators to work out that there might be some connection between the two events. It makes no sense.
- Retail Stocks Flash Bearish Signal on Oil, U.S. Spending Pause. Retail stocks are trailing the broader market as the plunge in oil prices shows signs of coming to an end. The SPDR Standard & Poor’s Retail Exchange-Traded Fund -- made up of more than 100 companies including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. -- has fallen 0.4 percentage point since April 2, while the SPDR S&P 500 ETF has risen 2.3 percentage points -- see chart. That follows a 10-month rally when the retail group outpaced the benchmark fund by 12 percentage points.
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Telegraph:
- 'Big big' problems on Greek deal as eurozone warns: no reform, no cash. Eurozone officials criticise 'amateur' Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, warning that time is running out to stop Greece going bankrupt.
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