News Corp. (NWSA)'s board turned a blind eye to illegal conduct including phone hacking by employees and sanctioned founder Rupert Murdoch's misuse of company resources to gain political clout, investors said in a court filing.

News Corp.'s directors knew in 2009 that some of the media company's reporters routinely hacked into phones and bribed British police officers for stories, a New York bank and an Illinois pension fund said in an amended complaint filed yesterday in Delaware Chancery Court. Board members refused to properly probe these acts for fear of angering Murdoch and his children who serve as company executives, according to the complaint in a lawsuit against the directors.

Germany's top court has ruled that its parliament was not given a proper say in Chancellor Angela Merkel's decisions on EU bailouts and budgetary rules.

The Constitutional Court found MPs had not been involved early enough when the permanent EU bailout fund was set up.

Mrs Merkel drove through her plan for tighter eurozone budget rules without informing MPs sufficiently, it added.

A BBC correspondent says the German chancellor may now find it harder to respond quickly to the euro crisis.

he seventh G20 summit opened at Los Cabos in Mexico on Monday. The importance of the G20 is evident from the fact that the members of the group account for more than 80 percent of the world's output and trade, and more than 60 percent of the global population.

The composition of the G20 is unique: economies with high per capita incomes and high levels of social development co-existing with the fastest-growing economies that are still developing. The economies referred to as the developed "North" include the G8 group - the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, Germany, Japan, France and Russia - and Australia. The countries representing the high-growth developing countries of the "South" include China, India, Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, Indonesia, Mexico, Argentina, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. During the last decade there has been a gradual change within the G20 in the balance of economic power between the developed "North" and the developing "South".

The financial crisis of 2008 and the debt crisis in Europe have resulted in major problems for several G8 countries. Most of the emerging market economies have been able to maintain a steady rate of economic growth. Led by China, the other economies from this group that are performing well are India, Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia and Mexico. As a result of their better economic performances, the ability of the emerging market and developing economy members of the G20 to influence the group's decisions has increased.

Carlos Slim goes global:

WSJ: Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, the world's richest man, is increasing his global reach with two significant acquisitions in European telecommunications and a stake in Argentine oil company YPF SA.

MercoPress: Last week it was announced that one of Slim's companies bought 8.4% of YPF shares, according to the information provided by the oil company, 51% of whose shares was seized by the Argentine state from the Spanish company Repsol last April.  The Mexican businessman stated it is "a long-term investment in one of the most relevant companies of the hydrocarbon sector in Latin America" and he pointed out that the company has a "big potential." The price tag was 343.9 million dollars.

Brazil vs. Mexico:

MEXICO CITY -- Mexicans looked on with envy in recent years as Brazilians won a reputation as Latin America's chosen people. With a surging economy and a prominent place on the world stage, Brazil was the country poised for greatness while Mexico remained mired in bloodshed and destitution. (...) Last year, Mexico's economy grew faster than Brazil's, and it looks set to outpace its larger Latin rival again in 2012.

CEPR: It is worth noting that Brazil grew considerably more rapidly since 2000, so Mexico would have a long way to go to make up lost ground, although its initial GDP was considerably higher than Brazil's.

MercoPress: The Peruvian government has approved private mining projects worth 28 billion dollars out of 52 billion dollars of projects planned over the next five years, Peru's Energy and Mines Minister Jorge Merino said.

MercoPress: Brazil and Argentina agreed on Monday "to oppose any financial adjustment plan" and sponsor development and growth policies to face the world crisis, in the framework of the two-day G20 summit taking place in Mexico.

MercoPress: The technical teams of Argentine nationalized hydrocarbon companies YPF and Russia's Gazprom will begin to do joint work in the area, said Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman.

MercoPress: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is to attend the upcoming UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in Rio De Janeiro, and pay official visits to Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile from June 20 to 26, it was announced in Beijing the Foreign Ministry

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Business Insider

Richard Koo wrote yesterday that basically you really can't blame countries like Greece for their own competitiveness problem.  It was all ECB's fault.

The idea was that Germany was suffering a balance sheet recession in early 2000s after the IT bubble while the south of Europe did not.  Maastricht Treaty prohibits euro area member state to run budget deficits of more than 3% of GDP, so fiscal stimulus was not available for Germany (note that Germany did breached the 3% deficit target though for a few years after the bubble).  Thus, according to Richard Koo, the only way to stimulate the German economy is for the ECB to ease monetary policy, which was appropriate for Germany, but inflationary for the rest of Europe.  And that was why there were bubbles in the periphery.

In short, the ECB's ultra-low policy rate had little impact in Germany, which was suffering from a balance sheet recession, but it was too low for other countries in the eurozone, resulting in widely divergent rates of inflation. As Germany became increasingly competitive relative to the strong economies of southern Europe, exports grew sharply and pulled the nation out of recession. Germany's trade surplus quickly overtook those of Japan and China to become the world's largest, with much of the growth fueled by exports to other European markets.

The chart below shows the outstanding loans in euro area by country.  As you can see, the lack of loan growth in Germany appears to be consistent with the idea that there was a balance sheet recession (or debt deflation, if you like) in Germany.  On the other side, you have what we now call the PIIGS countries which loans continued to grow.  Most notably here, of course, is Spain, with rapid loan growth fuelling its real estate bubble.