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China and Japan have agreed to start direct trading of their currencies, officials announced during a visit here by Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda. The move was among several that emerged from Mr. Noda’s meetings with President Hu Jintao. Japan will also apply to buy Chinese bonds next year, allowing it to accumulate more renminbi in its foreign-exchange reserves. China is the world’s second-largest economy while Japan is the third largest, and the currency agreement is part of a move away from using dollars. Chinese officials have said recently they would like to broaden the global use of the renminbi,...

3 share via email OTTAWA - The Canadian economy's recent growth spurt ran out of steam in October, but the country still got a strong vote of confidence Friday from the influential Moody's Investor Service. The New York rating agency renewed Canada's AAA debt rating — a seal of approval for the federal government's bonds — on a day when Statistics Canada reported the economy failed to grow for the first time in five months, Ratings by Moody's, Standard and Poor's and similar services are among the factors that determine how much interest governments have to pay when they issue...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- U.S. stocks fell sharply Monday as investors remain concerned about the debt crisis in Europe and its potential impact on the global banking system. The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) was down 114 points, or 1%, in afternoon trading. The S&P 500 (SPX) sank 14 points, or 1.1%. The Nasdaq (COMP) slid 31 points, or 1.2%. Stocks opened higher but the gains faded as the banking sector dragged down the broader market. Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) fell below $5 per share, lowest level since the worst of the financial crisis in March 2009. Citigroup...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- There's a good chance France and a few other euro area governments will have their credit ratings downgraded in the near future. That would mark another low point in Europe's long-running debt crisis, but it may not shock the markets. "The downgrades are likely to come sooner rather than later," said Ewen Cameron Watt, chief investment strategist for the BlackRock Investment Institute. "But we believe bond markets have largely factored them in for countries such as France, Italy and Spain." While the bond market may be prepared, the immediate response could be less sanguine in the...

Financial Panic Sweeps Europe As The Head Of The IMF Warns Of A “1930s Depression”December 17, 2011 Are we on the verge of another Great Depression? Christian Lagarde, the head of the IMF, said this week that if dramatic action is not taken immediately we could actually see conditions "reminiscent of the 1930s depression" and that no country on earth "will be immune to the crisis". Right now, financial panic is sweeping across Europe, but most Americans are not too concerned about it because they simply don't understand how important the EU is. The truth is that the EU has...

Should You Worry About Europe's Back Door Bank Run? December 16, 2011 By Keith Fitz-Gerald, Chief Investment Strategist, Money Morning On Wednesday, Fitch Ratings Inc. downgraded its credit ratings on five of Europe's biggest banks, and while that decision made headlines, it's not the most important story to come out of Europe this week. The real story, which the mainstream media is neglecting, is that there are signs of an underground run on Europe's banks. Almost nobody's talking about it, but there are indications money is already moving out of the European Union (EU) faster than rats abandoning a sinking...

Europe is in the midst of a fiscal crisis caused by too much government spending, yet many of the continent’s politicians want the European Central Bank to purchase the dodgy debt of reckless welfare states such as Spain, Italy, Greece, and Portugal in order to prop up these big government policies. So it’s especially noteworthy that economists at the European Central Bank have just produced a study showing that government spending is unambiguously harmful to economic performance. Here is a brief description of the key findings. …we analyse a wide set of 108 countries composed of both developed and emerging...

Spain's recent elections produced one of the most lopsided results since the country's return of democracy in 1975. With a 186-seat parliamentary majority and more than 44% of the vote, the conservative Popular Party managed its best performance ever, while the ruling Socialists suffered their worst defeat. If incoming President Mariano Rajoy doesn't deliver his country from economic catastrophe, it won't be because he lacks political support. Of all the troubled countries in Europe, Spain is the most significant. Given their relatively small sizes, Greece, Ireland and Portugal — the countries already temporarily "rescued" by the European Union — do...

Last week's European Summit shows how difficult it is for the European Union to confront its fundamental economic problems. Since 2007, many European Union countries have suffered loss of their rates of growth and high unemployment. Yet the European Summit offers no plan for growth. More trouble lies ahead for Europe. America's economic condition is not yet as dire as Europe's, but it soon will be if we do not correct the root cause of the problems that we face in our own country. Since 2006 America's growth rate has also declined. America now has 15.5% less GDP than it...

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-05) and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) Dec 8 - With the European debt crisis dominating the news and threatening to pull the world into a double-dip recession, there are growing calls for Uncle Sam to come to the rescue. The U.S. is already committing untold billions to the $1.4 trillion European bailout fund, but that's not enough, according to some European leaders and even U.S. politicians. They say that while the EU bailout is costly, it's also necessary. They are only right about the cost. These endless bailouts are not only unnecessary, but are in fact...

Topf Says Israel to Invest in U.S. Equities in 2012 Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Barry Topf, senior adviser to Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer, discusses plans to invest foreign reserves in U.S. equities. He spoke yesterday in Jerusalem with Bloomberg's Alisa Odenheimer. (/Bloomberg)