Good morning New York,
FT ALPHAVILLE
For the US, it's only a 'lost half-decade': John Calverley and team at Standard Chartered have a big report out looking at how a selection of developed economies are doing post-2008. The short answer is that the US has largely recovered from the crisis, with growth there likely to be above trend in 2014. Paul's post has more.
Kuroda hasn't got the hang of the Jedi thing yet: Economics minister Akira Amari said yesterday that Kuroda was communicating well with markets. Volatility in JGB yields suggests otherwise. Kate proposes that Kuroda has yet to get his Jedi economics quite right.
Paul Tudor Jones's 'principles' for investing and trading superstardom: A necessary but insufficient first step is: be a dude. The next steps, which are here, are equally insightful.
NEWS
BoJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda promises to stabilise bond market: Haruhiko Kuroda vowed on Friday to do more to steady Japan's bond market, as another rocky day's trading cast doubt over the effectiveness of the across-the-board effort to reflate the world's third-largest-economy. The Bank of Japan governor said that the central bank would continue to do its best to curb volatility in bond yields, which have fluctuated wildly since the bank shook up its monetary easing programme last month. "Through dialogue with the market and more flexible operations, we will ensure the stability of financial and capital markets," Mr Kuroda told a seminar in Tokyo on Friday. (Financial Times) (Wall Street Journal<)
Proctor & Gamble brings back AG Lafley: The world's biggest consumer product maker has returned Lafley, who led the company from 2000 to 2009, as CEO. He replaces embattled Bob McDonald, who will retire next month. Lafley's return comes amid a $10bn restructuring launched in February 2012, and about a year after activist investor Bill Ackman took a stake in P&G and began agitating for change. (Financial Times)(Reuters)
States' rift on taxes widens: "Minnesota's move to raise $2.1 billion in new taxes, largely from the wealthy, to fund government programs puts it among a handful of states controlled by Democrats that are adopting more liberal fiscal policies at a time when many Republican-dominated statehouses are pushing to cut taxes." (Wall Street Journal)
Icahn seeks up to $7 billion for Dell bid: "Activist investor Carl Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management Inc have initiated talks with banks and asset managers to line up commitments for as much as $7 billion in bridge loans to back their leveraged recapitalization proposal for Dell Inc, banking sources told Thomson Reuters LPC on Thursday." (Reuters)
Tokyo denies 'ghosts' keeping PM out of residence: "Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's cabinet on Friday formally denied months-long rumours that the premier had not moved into his official residence over fears the mansion is haunted." (France24) (David - sorry)
Spanish banks will need to provision up to another €10bn to cover loans that borrowers will struggle to repay, according to an internal estimate by the Bank of Spain. It is the first official assessment of the likely impact of the central bank's new approach towards more than €200bn of loans that were rolled over before they were due to expire, often because of doubts over corporate borrowers' ability to repay. (Financial Times)
Draghi wants UK to become 'more European': "I cannot say which of the two sets of arguments is stronger, the economic or the political ones, neither am I going to enter into a domestic policy debate, but what I can say is that Europe needs a more European UK as much as the UK needs a more British Europe," Draghi said in a speech met with applause at the City of London Corporation last night. (Financial Times)
German IFO rises: "The Ifo institute's business climate index, based on a survey of 7,000 executives, climbed to 105.7 from 104.4 in April. That's the first gain since February. Economists predicted sentiment to remain unchanged, according to the median of 44 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey. (Bloomberg)
Private consumption helps German economy to meager growth: "Germany's gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 0.1 percent on the quarter and shrank by 1.4 percent on the year, final seasonally adjusted data from the Statistics Office confirmed. Private consumption added 0.4 percentage points to GDP, while gross capital investment deducted 0.3 points. Foreign trade added 0.1 points as exports fell but imports dropped even more rapidly. Separate data showed rising wages had German consumers feeling more inclined to spend than at any point since September 2007." (Reuters)
An agreement opens some Chinese audit papers to the U.S.: "Accounting regulators in the United States and China announced on Friday in Beijing that they had reached an understanding that could give American fraud investigators access to work papers of Chinese audit firms. Until now, American efforts to see such papers have been rejected." (New York Times)
EU rushes out corporate tax transparency rules, extending transparency reforms for banks and resources groups to all large public and private companies amid a political furore over tax paid by companies such as Apple, Starbucks and Google. (Financial Times)
"The US Federal Trade Commission has begun an informal inquiry into Google's display advertising business, opening a new front in the internet search company's antitrust battles just months after it appeared to resolve earlier investigations on both sides of the Atlantic." (Financial Times)
Gold is having a good week: Prices are headed for the highest weekly performance in a month amid worries about monetary stimulus. (Bloomberg)
Markets: Japanese stocks closed higher, but only after another extremely volatile session leaked uncertainty into global equity markets that some investors consider vulnerable after many months of strong gains. The FTSE All-World equity index, which this week hit a near five-year intraday high of 252, is up 0.2 per cent to 245.7 as US index futures, having twitched back and forth in out of hours trading, now point to the S&P 500 gaining 4 points to 1,653. In Europe, the FTSE Eurofirst 300 is up 0.3 per cent at the open. The Nikkei Vix, a measure of implied volatility, is trading at 40, compared to an average of 22 since its inception at the start of 2012 and a high of 48 on Thursday, writes the FT's Global Markets samurai Jamie Chisholm.
