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Tuesday, March 27

27th Mar - Krugman kicks Katainen, Euromaster's "Plan"

Here are the lunchtime regular briefing links plus some interesting articles I’ve cherry-picked. The first article (luckily short one) in Euro Crisis is worth reading: authors are Marco Buti (Director General of EMU at the Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs) and Pier Carlo Padoan (OECD Deputy Secretary-General and Chief Economist).

Their suggested solution is of course orthodox (no euro break-up) and possibly not workable, but the one that will be implemented, as Marco B. is what Krugman would call a "Very Serious Person". On that note, Krugman beats Finland's prime minister senseless and introduces a new, Orwellian word growsterity.

News And Market Re-Cap – RanSquawk / ZH
The euro zone today – MacroScope / Reuters
The Lunch Wrap – alphaville / FT
EM New York headlines – beyondbrics / FT
Morning MarketBeat: Don´t fight the FEDMarketBeat / WSJ
Morning Take-Out DealBook / NYT
EZ Crisis Daily Press Summary – Open Europe

Debt crisis: live – The Telegraph
Europe Crisis Tracker – WSJ
Tracking Europe’s Debt Crisis – NYT
FX Options Analytics – Saxo Bank

EURO CRISIS
From a vicious to a virtuous circle in the Eurozone - the time is ripevoxeu.org
The economic and financial crisis in the Eurozone is in its fourth year. This column argues that, by providing a confidence bridge, decisive and credible policy action can turn the economy around and bring it towards a good equilibrium of debt sustainability and sustainable growth.

Did the Bank of England cause the boom and bust?Robert Peston / BBC
How much were central banks, notably the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve, to blame for the financial boom and bust that's landed us with years of economic stagnation?

Illusion of Cheap Money; Major Promises in Europe But No Real Reform; Does the Bond Market Have it Wrong? 30 years of Japanisation?Mish’s
Steen Jakobsen, chief economist at Saxo Bank in Denmark discusses the illusion of cheap money, bond market yields, and the lack of European reform in his latest email.

Sarko Spam, “Muslim by Appearance,” and Self-DestructionTestosterone Pit
President Nicolas Sarkozy, practically written-off in the French presidential election, is grasping at straws, and in the process, during an interview on France Info, he created an official classification of people in France, and maybe even in the whole entire world: Muslim by appearance.

After shunning Hollande, Berlin hedges bets on French voteChicago Tribune
After publicly throwing her weight behind Nicolas Sarkozy's re-election campaign at the start of the year, Germany's Angela Merkel and her advisers are quietly preparing for the possibility that they may have to do business with his Socialist challenger.

EMU pollDanske Bank (pdf)
As the No camp generally gains momentum during a referendum campaign, everything suggests a vote would result in a No if held today. When the Danes will be asked to vote again on the euro remains uncertain. We do not expect this to happen in the near future.

EURO CRISIS: PERIPHERY
Portugal May Be the Next GreeceTIME
The worst is over for the Eurozone, the experts say. But
Greece isn't really fixed and Portugal could become a second big problem before year-end.

Success StoriesKrugman / NYT
Mr. Katainen, the 40-year-old leader of one of the euro area’s last remaining triple-A-rated countries, spoke more optimistically in his public comments of “growsterity,”

The Fund, arrears, and Greek holdoutsalphaville / FT
So it turns out that we won’t know, for a little while longer, who the holdouts are in Greece’s foreign law bonds – a remaining pimple on the bottom of its debt workout. Greece has pushed back the deadline for foreign law bondholders to agree to a debt restructuring to April 4

Planning for the Greek elections – what you need to knowSaxo Bank
The current debt-restructuring programme in Greece is one of the most complex in history and the new government will not necessarily agree to all of the measures.

OTHER
Fed Policy: Bernanke Is Warming Up His HelicopterThe Daily Capitalist

Bernanke rolls the dice on what seems to be a bad betZH

Bernanke, Bullard, and QE3Tim Duy’s Fed Watch
I do not think Bernanke's speech is a signal that QE3 is guaranteed.  But it is a signal that QE3 is definitely not off the table.  It is entirely data dependent.  The current flow of data does not support additional action.

All You Thought You Knew About the Swiss Franc Is Wrong, Says HSBCThe Source / WSJ
“When we started investigating the numbers, this is not the result we thought we would find,” said Daragh Maher, foreign-exchange strategist at the bank.

OFF-TOPIC
Father of the email attachmentThe Guardian
As his invention celebrates its 20th anniversary, Nathaniel Borenstein explains how and why he revolutionised modern communications

Censorship and deletion practices in Chinese social mediaFirst Monday
With Twitter and Facebook blocked in China, the stream of information from Chinese domestic social media provides a case study of social media behavior under the influence of active censorship.