Leaders of the world's biggest economies papered over their differences at the G20 today with agreement to develop new guidelines to prevent so-called "currency wars".

The deal falls well short of the 4% limit on national trade deficits and surpluses proposed by US President Barack Obama, which was blocked by exporting countries China and Germany.

...Prime Minister David Cameron hailed the outcome as "good for British jobs, good for British businesses and good for British exporters".

José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, said the European Union stood ready to help Ireland if it needed financial assistance. "What is important to know is that we have all the essential instruments in place in the European Union andeurozone to act if necessary," MrBarroso said. "We are monitoring the situation closely."

Brian Lenihan, Ireland's Finance Minister, described the country's borrowing problems as "very serious", as the yields on its bonds hit yet another all-time high. The yield on 10-year bonds peaked at 9.26 per cent yesterday, almost four times the yield that is demanded by investors in equivalent German bonds.

"The bond spreads are very serious and there is international concern about that," Mr Lenihan said. He was also forced to clarify remarks made on Wednesday by Patrick Honohan, the Governor of the Bank of Ireland, who said that, were the International Monetary Fund to intervene, the package of economic measures it would demand would not be hugely different to what Ireland's Government was in any case proposing. Mr Honohan's remarks should not be interpreted as preparing the way for an IMF bail-out, Mr Lenihan insisted.

Just how clueless can the marketistas be about markets?...

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

It is the moment that Uncle Sam is meant to get serious about his spendthrift ways. A panel created by Barack Obama to address America's monumental budget deficit has finally come forward with a list of recommended corrective steps and the message they carry is as abrupt as it is obvious: getting it done will require sacrifice by all.

The package, the result of months of behind-closed-doors wrangling by the 18-member commission, aims to restore balance to the federal budget through a combination of cuts and adjustments to spending programmes, including sacred cows such as military defence and support for retirees, as well as revenue-raising devices like more tax on petrol.

Rolls said the failure was confined to a specific component in the turbine of the Trent 900 engine, which sparked an oil fire and led to the release of another part - a turbine disc.

...The European Aviation Safety Authority yesterday issued an emergency directive demanding regular checks on all Trent 900 engines made by Rolls-Royce.

This forced Qantas, which discovered small oil leaks in engines on three separate aircraft, to prolong the grounding of its A380 fleet.

Singapore Airlines grounded three of its 11 A380s after inspections revealed oil stains and German airline Lufthansa said it would also perform inspections of engines on its superjumbos.

TURKEY: The start of trial services on the 58 km suburban line from Alsançak to Aliaga on October 29 marked the completion of a project to develop the 80 km Aliaga-Menderes commuter network in Izmir. The project involves reconstructing two existing railway lines and launching suburban services to connect urban developments north and south of the city centre.

...Commuter services are worked by 33 three-car air-conditioned EMUs supplied by CAF. The trains can carry 741 passengers, including 158 seated, and are equipped with passenger information systems, video entertainment and CCTV.

This is a major project, suburban rail has been practically nonexistent in Turkey outside Istanbul.

The train maker, CAF, is Spanish (Basque), and previously supplied Turkey's first high-speed trains.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Retired judges are rushing through complex cases to speed foreclosures in Florida

The foreclosure lawyers down in Jacksonville had warned me, but I was skeptical. They told me the state of Florida had created a special super-high-speed housing court with a specific mandate to rubber-stamp the legally dicey foreclosures by corporate mortgage pushers like Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan Chase. This "rocket docket," as it is called in town, is presided over by retired judges who seem to have no clue about the insanely complex financial instruments they are ruling on -- securitized mortgages and laby rinthine derivative deals of a type that didn't even exist when most of them were active members of the bench. Their stated mission isn't to decide right and wrong, but to clear cases and blast human beings out of their homes with ultimate velocity. They certainly have no incentive to penetrate the profound criminal mysteries of the great American mortgage bubble of the 2000s, perhaps the most complex Ponzi scheme in human history -- an epic mountain range of corporate fraud in which Wall Street megabanks conspired first to collect huge numbers of subprime mortgages, then to unload them on unsuspecting third parties like pensions, trade unions and insurance companies (and, ultimately, you and me, as taxpayers) in the guise of AAA-rated investments. Selling lead as gold, shit as Chanel No. 5, was the essence of the booming international fraud scheme that created most all of these now-failing home mortgages.

The rocket docket wasn't created to investigate any of that. It exists to launder the crime and bury the evidence by speeding thousands of fraudulent and predatory loans to the ends of their life cycles, so that the houses attached to them can be sold again with clean paperwork. The judges, in fact, openly admit that their primary mission is not justice but speed. One Jacksonville judge, the Honorable A.C. Soud, even told a local newspaper that his goal is to resolve 25 cases per hour. Given the way the system is rigged, that means His Honor could well be throwing one ass on the street every 2.4 minutes.