Next Update May 5

More  on Rogoff & Reinhart  from Harvard - Harvard I tell ya

..They have  done a great deal of damage to the world!

And thank you Mr. Herndon!

QUICK OVERVIEW

• The Group of 20 (G20) major economies on Friday pledged further actions to shore up growth while watching for monetary easing effects.

• Reports that Cyprus could sell a significant volume of gold may have triggered the sharp drop in prices, but we believe the fall represents a changing sentiment towards the metal," said Fitch

• Dutch unemployment increased to 8.1% in March from 7.7% in February. This is the highest number of unemployed people since the CBS started measuring unemployment in the 1980s.

• The IMF predicts the Spanish economy would shrink 1.6% in 2013, and the country's unemployment rate would peak at 27% this year before dropping to 26.5% in 2014 when its economy is predicted to grow 0.7%

• German car sales fell 17% in March.
• The indicator of economic sentiment for Germany fell by 12.2 points and stood at a level of 36.3 points.

• U.S. housing starts were at an annual rate of 1.04 million - 7.0% above the revised February estimate of 968,000, and up 46.7% YoY. This represented the highest level since June 2008.

• Fitch has downgraded the United Kingdom's Long-term foreign and local currency Issuer Default Ratings to 'AA+' from 'AAA'. The Outlook is Stable.

• Focusing on immediate economic concerns over future environmental ones, the European Parliament rejected a proposal to cut the number of pollution permits.

• Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) has raised its quarterly dividend 7%, marking the 57th consecutive year that the world's largest consumer-products company has boosted its payout.

• (Guardian) Frank Rijsberman, head of the world's 15 international CGIAR crop research centers, which study food insecurity, said: "Food production will have to rise 60% by 2050 just to keep pace with expected global population increase and changing demand.

• From the great State of Texas  Republican congressman Joe Barton comes this quote "I would point out that if you are a believer in the Bible, one would have to say the great flood was an example of climate change," Barton told a congressional hearing "That certainly wasn't because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy."

• (Pritchard) Portugal's leading elder statesman has called on the country to copy Argentina and default (Telegraph)

• The Dutch government is to postpone some austerity measures, in a significant break away from EU policy that risks angering Germany.

• (FT) Haruhiko Kuroda has announced his arrival as governor of the Bank of Japan by introducing a “new phase of monetary easing”, doubling Japan’s monetary base through aggressive purchases of long-term government bonds and risk assets.

• (Science Daily) A genetic analysis of the avian flu virus responsible for at least nine human deaths in China portrays a virus evolving to adapt to human cells, raising concern about its potential to spark a new global flu pandemic…the new strain could be treated with another clinically relevant antiviral drug, oseltamivir

• (NZH) A 17-year-old girl has exposed Islamic sex tourism in India where Muslim men from the Middle East and Africa are buying one-month wives for sex.

Why America Forgot A Horrific Terrorist Attack On Wall Street In 1920 I set out to write that book because I came across a mention of the 1920 bombing, which killed 38 people and injured hundreds more people, many of them quite seriously. I was shocked that I had never heard of this. What's going on that allowed this big event to be lost to history?

Cyprus bail-out vote stirs fresh jitters as slump fears grow in Europe Europe’s policy elites are increasingly on the back foot after furious controversy this week over a Harvard paper widely cited as the intellectual justification for austerity. (See below)

The Excel Depression  ... what really matters isn’t what they meant to say, it’s how their work was read: Austerity enthusiasts trumpeted that supposed 90 percent tipping point as a proven fact and a reason to slash government spending even in the face of mass unemployment.

Next Update April 21