From Bloomberg: "Bank of Japan governor nominee Haruhiko Kuroda said that the central bank will consider buying derivatives if he’s confirmed as governor and signaled a readiness for a quick expansion in monetary stimulus. “We will carefully consider such a proposal,” Kuroda, the Asian Development Bank chief, said in response to a lawmaker’s question in his second Diet confirmation hearing today."

This development makes intuitive sense: central banks are desperate to destroy their currencies in the fastest and most spectacular fashion, and what better way than to have your central bank load up on the riskiest of "assets", which would be one brief downturn away from wiping away all the of the bank's capital and then some, and thus sending the currency into an even greater tailspin - just the outcome sought.

After all, in the new normal, it is he who "collateralizes" their currency with the most toxic biohazard, that wins. The Bank of Japan may have just taken a commanding lead over everyone else. The question now is: how soon until Bernanke follows suit and demands that the Fed be allowed to monetize equities, HY bonds, and other E-Trade baby specials.

Down to a handful of staffers, the NCC will consolidate into the United Methodist Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.” The Spectator article notes that since its heyday in the 1960′s, membership in a NCC-affiliated denomination has dropped from 1 on 6 Americans to 1 in 15, as well as noting the Marxist focus of the organization – reported on Sixty Minutes and other media in the 1980s.

This is important to note, as many have mused over the years that ecumenism is in decline. It isn’t; because its ultimate goal of confessional relativism is alive and well. To assume ecumenism is “dead” is a mistake commonly made in the hopes of improvement in the confusing situation in Orthodoxy currently.

But there is a more subtle flashing light we should be equally alarmed by: the fact that the financial whizzkids in the big banks are back, in force, making super-complicated derivatives again. Many a psychological study has found that humans take about seven years to get over, and then forget about, a major trauma. Historically, stock markets, being driven by humans, have tended to have a similar length memory of catastrophes, before making the same dumb mistakes again.

But it hasn't even been five years since derivatives (on that occasion based on daft mortgages) blew up the world, and yet these exotic creatures have already returned. With a vengeance.

Research from Thomson Reuters declared that banks were creating more derivatives known as asset-backed securities than at any time since before the Lehman Brothers crash. Of those, 22 per cent were made up of – and forgive me the alphabet soup here – CDOs and CLOs. The very type of derivatives that exploded last time. At this stage last year, only 6 per cent fell into those categories.

In other words, banks are creating more of the riskiest types of the riskiest products.

It could out you as gay. It might reveal how you vote. It might even suggest that you're an unmarried introvert with a high IQ and a weakness for nicotine. That's the conclusion of a study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers reported analyzing the likes of more than 58,000 American Facebook users to make guesses about their personalities and behavior, and even whether they drank, smoked, or did drugs. Cambridge University researcher David Stillwell, one of the study's authors, said the results may come as a surprise. "Your likes may be saying more about you than you realize," he said.

The study found that Facebook likes were linked to sexual orientation, gender, age, ethnicity, IQ, religion, politics and cigarette, drug, or alcohol use. The likes also mapped to relationship status, number of Facebook friends, as well as half a dozen different personality traits.

Some likes were more revealing than others. Researchers could correctly distinguish between users who identified themselves as black or white 95 percent of the time. That success rate dropped to a still impressive 88 percent when trying to guess whether a male user was homosexual, and to 85 percent when telling Democrats from Republicans.

Stilwell said that Facebook users could change the privacy settings on their likes to put them beyond the reach of researchers, advertisers or nearly anyone else. But he declined to say how many users did so. For the unknown number of users whose preferences are public, Stillwell had this advice: Look before you like.

Kathleen Brooks, research director at currency trader Forex.com, said that while the dollar's "new found strength" was a key factor, the continued slide of the pound also betrayed traders' nerves that the Bank of England may be on the brink of ramping up its asset purchase programme.

"While the Bank of England did not increase quantitative easing on Thursday, we think it's waiting in the wings," she said, adding that traders are expecting the minutes of the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee, which will be published on March 20, to show the decision "came down to the wire, maybe by just one vote."

Ms Brooks warned the pound would likely continue its slide and could sink as low as $1.45 within weeks, citing "a lot of momentum on the down side" and data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission showing an increase in bets against the pound by speculators.

Since the region's debt crisis erupted in Greece in late 2009, the European Union has created complex rescue mechanisms to prop up distressed countries and their shaky banking sectors, setting aside a total of 700 billion euros.

But little has been done to tackle the devastating social impact of the crisis, with more than 26 million people unemployed across the EU, including one in every two young people in Greece, Spain and parts of Italy and Portugal.

That crippling level of unemployment has led to protests and outbreaks of violence across southern Europe, raising the threat of full-scale social breakdown, including rising crime and anti-immigrant attacks that can further rattle unstable governments.

"We saved the banks but are running the risk of losing a generation," said Martin Schulz, a German socialist who has led the European Parliament, the EU's only directly elected institution, since January last year.

"One of the biggest threats to the European Union is that people entirely lose their confidence in the capacity of the EU to solve their problems. And if the younger generation is losing trust, then in my eyes the European Union is in real danger," he told Reuters in an interview.

Juncker: For my generation, the monetary union has always been about forging peace. Today, I notice with a certain sense of regret that far too many Europeans are returning to a regional and national mindset.

SPIEGEL: What do you mean by that?

Juncker: The way some German politicians have lashed out at Greece when the country fell into the crisis has left deep wounds there. I was just as shocked by the banners of protesters in Athens that showed the German chancellor in a Nazi uniform. Sentiments suddenly surfaced that we thought had been finally relegated to the past. The Italian election was also excessively anti-German and thus un-European.

SPIEGEL: You're exaggerating. No one today seriously doubts peace and friendship in Europe.

Juncker: That's true. But anyone who believes that the eternal issue of war and peace in Europe has been permanently laid to rest could be making a monumental error. The demons haven't been banished; they are merely sleeping, as the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo have shown us. I am chilled by the realization of how similar circumstances in Europe in 2013 are to those of 100 years ago.

The poll was conducted among 502 eligible voters in Austria and published ahead of the 75th anniversary of the country's annexation by Nazi Germany. Jewish leaders have warned of late against what they called creeping tolerance of anti-Semitism in Austria. A rabbi said in September that neo-Nazi soccer fans had verbally abused him while police looked on, and a far-right politician drew criticism from the country's president for posting a cartoon on his website that was widely seen as anti-Semitic.

Prime Minster Viktor Orbán, like Áder a member of the conservative Fidesz party, has expanded his power dramatically. While the head of state was in Berlin, the prime minister moved ahead with a highly controversial package of amendments to the country's constitution. The amendments weaken the country's constitutional court, the last defender of Hungary's constitutional state, and they limit the independence of the entire judiciary branch.

In other words, a country at the center of the European Union is moving away from the principles of freedom, democracy and the rule of law. Hungarian constitutional expert Kolláth György said the constitutional amendments "destroy the system of checks and balances and overturns the mutual, trustful and pluralistic cooperation of the constitutional bodies. ... Likewise it is a rejection of the European values that Hungary once willingly accepted."

Such appraisals don't phase parliamentary speaker Kövér. Asked whether he thought a compromise was possible with government critics, he answered: "It's unlikely that we would find a compromise with representatives who see even same-sex marriage as conceivable."

Such systems could be used to track health and monitor healing near the skin’s surface, as in the case of surgical wounds. So-called “epidermal electronics” were demonstrated previously in research from the lab of John Rogers, a materials scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; the devices consist of ultra-thin electrodes, electronics, sensors, and wireless power and communication systems.

In theory, they could attach to the skin and record and transmit electrophysiological measurements for medical purposes. These early versions of the technology, which were designed to be applied to a thin, soft elastomer backing, were “fine for an office environment,” says Rogers, “but if you wanted to go swimming or take a shower they weren’t able to hold up.”

Now, Rogers and his coworkers have figured out how to print the electronics right on the skin, making the device more durable and rugged.

A Vatican representative at the meal, annoyed by the requests for more information, shouted, “How can you ask us such questions?” The clash came amid mounting pressure on the Vatican to clean up its bank — for decades the subject of dark intrigue and linked to one mysterious death — as part of a push by the European Union to apply common rules to all the countries and micro-states like Vatican City and Monaco that use the euro.

Those pressures continued until the very last days of Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy and remain a critical issue for the cardinals now meeting to elect a new pope. As the conclave begins Tuesday, the specter of financial scandal presents a special challenge for Benedict’s successor, who must modernize the Roman Catholic Church’s finances or risk the Vatican’s access to the global banking system, undermining its moral authority and its financial stability.

Founded in 1942 and housed in a small round tower at the foot of the Apostolic Palace, the Vatican bank generally does not give loans but manages deposits and patrimony for religious institutions, clerics and diplomats accredited to the Vatican, who are among the only depositors allowed to hold accounts there. During the cold war, the bank was widely seen as a back channel to transfer money to the Eastern Bloc to help end Communism, and today the Vatican uses the bank to help it operate in sensitive areas like Cuba and China, Vatican experts say.

But largely because of the Vatican’s reluctance to reveal its account holders to outside authorities — and especially to subject itself to scrutiny of past transactions — suspicion has swirled for years about whether some of its accounts had ties to organized crime or Italian political slush funds.