PoliFeed: What You Need To Know

Last December there was a lot of concern that European financial chaos could kill the American economy. Then came several months of strong growth in the United States. But more recently, America’s economic numbers have turned sour again. What explains it? I’m beginning to worry that it may be the return of Euromageddon. Specifically, the latest IMF financial stability report sees massive $2.6 trillion in deleveraging by European banks over the next 18 months. 

The problem here for non-Europeans is that a fair amount of domestic American credit is actually laundered through Europe by European banks who raise funds in the US wholesale market and then lend them back to US borrowers. The upshot is that a banking squeeze in Europe can squeeze credit availability in the United States which could explain the otherwise puzzling failure of the United States to respond to steadily rising rents with new multifamily house construction.

(Reuters) - Russia will back Jim Yong Kim, the U.S. nominee for the next World Bank head, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Friday after meeting the candidate, who is in Moscow on his world tour to drum up support.

“I always get very cautious when I see a country resort to phrasings such as ‘No. 1 enemy.’ It is very reminiscent of Hollywood in a certain period of history,” Medvedev said, through a translator, at the nuclear security summit in Seoul, South Korea.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74523.html#ixzz1qKNSWKJ7

McDonald’s makes it into fourth position, with 1.9 million employees. However, 80% of the restaurants are franchises so, strictly speaking, 1.5 million of these people are employed by other companies, although they all wear the uniform.

Continue reading the main story

Third is the US supermarket chain Walmart, which employs 2.1 million staff - including almost 200,000 who work for the Asda supermarket chain in the UK.

Second place goes to the Chinese military - the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) - with forces numbering 2.3 million.

And the top spot is taken by the US Department of Defense with a cool 3.2 million-strong workforce.

Sweden was the first European country to introduce bank notes in 1661. Now it’s come farther than most on the path toward getting rid of them.

“I can’t see why we should be printing bank notes at all anymore,” says Bjoern Ulvaeus, former member of 1970’s pop group ABBA, and a vocal proponent for a world without cash.

The company’s activities in Russia are being looked at as part of a broader FBI investigation into possible violations by News Corp of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act - an inquiry fueled by allegations that journalists for Murdoch newspapers in Britain for years systematically made questionable payments to public servants, including police and military officials, in return for story tipoffs.

The Democratic-led Senate voted on Thursday to table the Blunt amendment aimed at rolling back the Obama administration’s birth control mandate. The tally was 51-48 to strike it down.