[jeffkrol]

of course who cares.. they are not Americans...........

http://post.jagran.com/obama-better-for-world-economy-poll-1345219777

Twice as many business executives around the world say the global economy will prosper better if incumbent President Barack Obama wins the next election than if his Republican challenger Mitt Romney does, a poll showed on Friday.

Democrat Obama was chosen by 42.7 percent in the 1,700 respondent poll, compared with 20.5 percent for Romney. The rest said "neither".

[Rondec]

The global economy is and will continue to be in a shambles until Europe takes care of their issues. The banks are way too intertwined for economic problems in Europe not to have ripples through the rest of the globe. Obama has basically been hands off in his relationship with Europe and i would expect a President Mitt to be the same. The same with a relationship with China. The same with the relationships in the Middle East.

[jeffkrol]

Obama has basically been hands off in his relationship with Europe

Really????

Mitt Romney said Sunday that the U.S. should not try and ride to the rescue as Europe confronts its perilous debt crisis.

“We are not going to send checks to Europe. We are not going to bail out the European banks,” Romney said in an interview broadcast on the CBS program “Face the Nation.”

Romney warns Europe: Don?t expect US bailout - The Hill's On The Money

America's central bank, the Federal Reserve, is engaged in a bailout of European banks. Surprisingly, its operation is largely unnoticed here.

The Fed is using what is termed a "temporary U.S. dollar liquidity swap arrangement" with the European Central Bank (ECB). There are similar arrangements with the central banks of Canada, England, Switzerland and Japan. Simply put, the Fed trades or "swaps" dollars for euros. The Fed is compensated by payment of an interest rate (currently 50 basis points, or one-half of 1%) above the overnight index swap rate. The ECB, which guarantees to return the dollars at an exchange rate fixed at the time the original swap is made, then lends the dollars to European banks of its choosing.

Why are the Fed and the ECB doing this? The Fed could, after all, lend directly to U.S. branches of foreign banks. It did a great deal of lending to foreign banks under various special credit facilities in the aftermath of Lehman's collapse in the fall of 2008. Or, the ECB could lend euros to banks and they could purchase dollars in foreign-exchange markets. The world is, after all, awash in dollars.

The two central banks are engaging in this roundabout procedure because each needs a fig leaf. The Fed was embarrassed by the revelations of its prior largess with foreign banks. It does not want the debt of foreign banks on its books. A currency swap with the ECB is not technically a loan.

This Byzantine financial arrangement could hardly be better designed to confuse observers, and it has largely succeeded on this side of the Atlantic, where press coverage has been light. Reporting in Europe is on the mark. On Dec. 21 the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung noted on its website that European banks took three-month credits worth $33 billion, which was financed by a swap between the ECB and the Fed. When it first came out in 2009 that the Greek government was much more heavily indebted than previously known, currency swaps reportedly arranged by Goldman Sachs were one subterfuge employed to hide its debts.

No matter the legalistic interpretation, the Fed is, working through the ECB, bailing out European banks and, indirectly, spendthrift European governments.

Gerald O'Driscoll: The Federal Reserve's Covert Bailout of Europe - WSJ.com