Macro chatter: 14 hours of meetings later, Europe’s got a plan
People walk outside an Alpha bank branch in Athens on April 19, 2012. Greek banks have been coming under increased pressure this week as consumers have been draining their accounts.
Need to know:
European leaders spent 14 hours talking and now have a plan for helping out the continent's banks.
They've agreed to use a eurozone bailout fund to recapitalize struggling banks and create a banking union aimed at stemming a vicious cycle of bank bailouts that drive up sovereign debt.
The move is expected to lower borrowing costs for some of the eurozone's most indebted members.
Want to know:
Americans are making more money. They're just not spending it.
Consumer spending in the US remained flat in May and April's gain wasn't as strong as initially reported, the Commerce Department's latest data show.
This comes as personal incomes and saving inched upward.
Just because:
There's more bad news for BlackBerry.
Research in Motion said it plans to cut 5,000 jobs and delay the release of its newest operating platform.
Dull but important:
Big changes could be coming to your credit card bills and home mortgages.
Bank of England Governor Mervy King is calling for an overhaul in the way in which LIBOR is calculated, the Wall Street Journal reported.
LIBOR underpins interest rates for just about everything, and Barclays has recently been fined for attempting to manipulate the key rate to help it boost trading profits.
Strange but true:
Brazil's richest man isn't exactly going broke, but he has managed to lose half his fortune. He's also lost his title as Brazil's richest man.
Eike Batista is now worth about $14.5 billion and has slipped from his No. 7 position on Forbes' list of the world's richest billionaires.
Batista had been aiming to take the world's richest man title from Mexico's Carlos Slim, but has been losing money as his energy company's stock prices have been plummeting in recent days.