Power Lunch Europe

A move announced by central bankers on Wednesday to contain the European debt crisis resulted in euphoria in global stock markets, but it also prompted skeptics to wonder: will this time be different? The New York Times reports.

In a stern pronouncement, Moody’s Investors Service this week warned of rising prospects for multiple defaults by countries in the euro zone and credit rating downgrades of nations across Europe if leaders should fail to resolve the spreading debt crisis.  The NYT reports.

About $200 million in customer money that vanished from MF Global is believed to have surfaced at JPMorgan Chase in Britain, according to people briefed on the matter. The New York Times reports.

The window of opportunity to save the euro is rapidly closing, as the sovereign debt crisis erodes the solvency of Europe’s banks and drives up borrowing rates for even once rock-solid countries like France.

Europe’s banking sector is ready for a shake-up as its largest financial institutions try to slim down their operations in response to the sovereign debt crisis. The NY Times repeorts.

Wall Street bonuses are set to fall by an average of 20 to 30 percent this year from a year ago, according to a closely watched compensation survey—the weakest bonus season since the financial crisis and a reflection of the leaner times confronting the industry NYT reports.

When Jon S. Corzine joined MF Global last year it seemed like a strange choice — the firm had none of the glamour, let alone the profits or footprint of Goldman Sachs, the bank he ran during the 1990s.

The guns in Libya have barely quieted, and NATO’s military assistance to the rebellion that toppled Col.Muammar el-Qaddafi will not end officially until Monday.But a new invasion force is already plotting its own landing on the shores of Tripoli. The New York Times reports.

Though financial institutions are not yet turning away customers at the door, they are trying to discourage some depositors from parking cash with them. NYT reports

Regulators in the United States and overseas are cracking down on computerized high-speed trading that crowds today’s stock exchanges, worried that as it spreads around the globe it is making market swings worse. The New York Times reports.

The prospect of guaranteeing the debt of richer but more spendthrift countries like Greece, Portugal and even Italy has led to public outrage in tiny Slovakia, the second-poorest country in the euro zone where the average worker earns just over $1,000 a month.  Now it is threatening to derail a collective European bailout . The New York Times reports.

Like Americans trying to raise quick cash by unloading their unwanted goods, the federal government is considering a novel way to reduce the deficit: holding the equivalent of a garage sale, reports the NY Times.

LONDON—Greece may never be able to pay off its huge debts, but its bonds, long scorned by investors, are suddenly being gobbled up by hedge funds. After a number of investors struck gold by betting against French banks, many have turned their attention to the hot yet risky euro zone trade of the moment: buying Greek government bonds that traders say are changing hands for as little as 36 cents for each euro of face value.

Two men who worked on the hit movie “Black Swan” have mounted an unusual challenge to the film industry’s widely accepted practice of unpaid internships by filing a lawsuit on Wednesday asserting that the production company had violated minimum wage and overtime laws by hiring dozens of such interns. The NYT reports.

Greece may never be able to pay off its huge debts, but its bonds, long scorned by investors, are suddenly being gobbled up by hedge funds, the New York Times reports.

“I found it peculiar that, even though the Americans have significantly worse fundamental data than the euro zone, that they tell us what we should do,” one European finance minister said.

Remember the collapse of Lehman Brothers ? Europeans certainly do. As Europe struggles to contain its government debt crisis, the greatest fear is that one of the Continent’s major banks may fail.

Can a bailout fund whose backers include some of the countries it may be called upon to bail out really succeed? The NYT reports.

European leaders on Thursday clinched a new rescue plan for Greece that could push the country into default on some debt but would also give Europe’s bailout fund new powers to aid struggling economies, the NY TImes reports