Geithner Gets It?

The new rules, called Basel III, would force banks to more than triple their current reserves.

They would raise the capital base as a form of insurance against sudden strains in the system or on any particular financial institution, and would be phased in from 2013, a statement from the Bank for International Settlements, the so-called central bankers’ bank, said.

Josef Ackermann told a Frankfurt press conference the bank sought to become “the undisputable leader in Germany’s retail banking business and advance to the group of top banks in the European private clients business.”

Together, Deutsche Bank and Postbank will have a total of 24 million clients in Germany, he said.

California startup YouMail said Monday that it has passed the half-billion-call mark and now manages more than 1.5 million calls daily.

“The growth is strong and steady,” YouMail founder and chief executive Alex Quilici told AFP. “It is almost more convenient to not answer the phone with YouMail.”

The new regulations, called Basel III, would force banks to more than triple their current reserves and would be phased in from 2013, said a statement issued by the Bank for International Settlements.

“The agreements reached today are a fundamental strengthening of the global capital standards,” said European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet, who chairs the group of regulators at the meeting in northern Switzerland.

The US economy lost 54,000 jobs last month, but incoming chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Austan Goolsbee, declined to predict where the jobless rate might stand at the end of this year.

“I don’t think the unemployment rate will be coming down significantly in the near future,” he told “Fox News Sunday.”

A study showed German wages rose by less than in any other European Union country in the past 10 years, boosting the biggest EU economy’s competitive position by two spots to fifth in rankings from the World Economic Forum.

In 2010, pay should increase by an average of 1.5 percent according to UniCredit economist Alexander Koch, while the economy is tipped to expand by at least double that.

The landmark Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), signed in June, is the most sweeping pact ever penned by the two sides, officially still not at peace after the end of a civil war in 1949.

“With ECFA becoming effective, the cross-Strait ties marched into a new era… Taiwan should better utilise the trend,” Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou told reporters while on a trip to the southern Tainan county.

The guru of this doomsday line of thinking may be economist Nouriel Roubini, thrust into the forefront after predicting the chaos wrought by the subprime mortgage crisis and the collapse of the housing bubble.

“The US has run out of bullets,” Roubini told an economic forum in Italy earlier this month. “Any shock at this point can tip you back into recession.”

“I lead this battle without thinking of the political cost,” the prime minister, a socialist, told visitors to the Thessaloniki International Fair. “It is a battle for the survival of Greece.

“Either we fight it all together, or we sink,” he added.

“The logic of restructuring the debt would be catastrophic for the economy, for our credibility, for our future,” Papandreou told a press conference on Sunday in Thessaloniki a day after sketching out his economic priorities during a visit to the city.

If debt payments were suspended, he said Greece “would head towards a potential and probable collapse of the banking system and the loss of Greek families’ property (which) would be a tragedy,” he added.

The figure marked the 10th straight month that the consumer price index, a key measure of inflation, has risen, but analysts said they did not think it would be enough to prompt policymakers to raise interest rates any time soon.

Other key data released by the National Bureau of Statistics showed the world’s second-largest economy remained robust last month, suggesting the Asian giant was not slowing as fast as many had feared.

Options on the CBOE Volatility Index (.VIX), Wall Street’s so-called fear gauge, were one of the top-traded contracts in the options market as investors made bets on a sharp jump in the index.

Next week “is the real start of a month to be nervous about,” said Brian Overby, senior options analyst at online brokerage TradeKing in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The new requirements, known as Basel III, will demand banks hold top-quality capital totaling 7 percent of their risk-bearing assets, but a long lead-in time eased fears that lenders will have to rush to raise capital.

Europe is the most likely region for banks to need to raise funds, notable in Germany, Spain and other weak spots.

As lawmakers return from a month-long break this week, Democrats aim to pass their small-business bill out of the Senate by the end of the week and send it to the House of Representatives for final approval.

The House has backed a version of the bill previously.

At their annual Mediterranean meeting, the world’s biggest reinsurance players have once again vowed to maintain discipline in setting prices on the contracts for risk cover they provide to insurers, saying they won’t engage in a competitive race to the bottom.

The world’s biggest reinsurer, Munich Re (MUVGn.DE), predicted it would maintain stable prices overall on its portfolio of business to be renewed at the start of the year, and said some prices were even rising following the sinking of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and earthquake in Chile this year.

He was one of many residents who returned to the ruined hillsides of their suburban San Francisco neighborhood Sunday after Thursday’s pipeline blast and fire destroyed nearly 50 homes and damaged dozens of others.

The explosion prompted California regulators to order the utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, to survey all its natural gas lines in the state in hopes of heading off another disaster.

The guidance, issued last week by Gen. David Petraeus and obtained Sunday by The Associated Press, was issued in response to concern that the military’s own contracting procedures could be, in some cases, running counter to efforts on the battlefield.

The changes are aimed, in large part, at addressing complaints that ordinary Afghans have seen little change in their daily lives despite billions poured into their country since 2001.

CEO Keith Wandell wrote a letter last week telling the workers it’s up to them to decide whether they want to remain part of Harley’s future.

“We are on a course to build a competitive company for the future and a business that is sustainable long term,” the letter said. “Nothing can get in the way of this objective.”

The issues will be aired Monday in two-minute speaking slots at an EPA hearing twice postponed last month because of security concerns over rallies and crowds anticipated in the thousands.

The hearing, the last of four around the country, will be held in two sessions on Monday and two more on Wednesday at The Forum in Binghamton, 115 miles southwest of Albany. The EPA is taking comment on how broadly to construct its study of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a technique for releasing natural gas from rock formations thousands of feet underground by injecting at high pressure millions of gallons of water mixed with chemicals and sand.

If you believe a few respected money managers, there’s opportunity aplenty in stocks now. If you find that surprising, wait until you hear where they think the bargains lurk: big blue chips that almost always fetch premium prices.

Legendary bear Jeremy Grantham of GMO LLC in Boston says the U.S. faces “seven lean years” of meager growth, but he has been pounding the table about blue chip bargains with big dividends. Steven Romick of FPA Crescent predicts rising taxes and an economic malaise but is singing the praises about “bigger is better” stocks now, too.

George Papandreou said Greece was on track to meet targets for reducing its deficit by nearly 40 percent this year.

“We will not need any new measures,” he said during a news conference a day after making his annual speech on the economy on the sidelines of a trade fair in northern Greece. Papandreou also reiterated that Athens did not plan to restructure its debt – a move that he said would have been “catastrophic.”

Gov. Ed Rendell insisted Sunday that the aid is not a state bailout, and said he only got involved in assembling the aid package after Harrisburg Mayor Linda Thompson called him Thursday morning.

All of the state money, except for a $100,000 grant under his control and a $500,000 loan, was due to the city anyway in future months, and should give it “breathing space” to sort out a solution, he said.