Simone Foxman

Critics of quantitative easing (QE)—whereby central banks push down interest rates and buy up safe assets to stimulate flagging economies—have long worried about the possible unintended consequences. The point of QE is to push down the yields on safe assets like government bonds so that investors put their money in riskier assets where it can do more economic work; the worry is that too much money in risky assets could blow up in investors’ faces.

Moody’s Ratings agency upgraded Turkey’s long-term credit rating to Baa3 for the first time today, giving the country an investment-grade rating at two out of the three major credit ratings agencies. In a post-financial crisis world, Turkey has leveraged an important geopolitical position with competitiveness, prudent fiscal policy, and economic reforms, even as more advanced economies struggle to grow.

The numbers: Decent, for an industry in a rut. A.P. Møller-Maersk’s quarterly revenue fell slightly to $14.047 billion in the first quarter from $14.327 billion a year earlier, and profits declined a more dramatic 32.8% from $1.175 billion to $790 million. It saw a small profit on its Maersk Line division (the container shipping division) after substantial losses in the first quarter of last year.

For better or worse, Asian companies are loading up on debt at a staggering rate. By 2017, Standard & Poor’s estimated in a report this week, non-financial corporate debt for Asia-Pacific countries will balloon to $29.9 billion, assuming corporate debt is issued at the rate of economic growth (as pictured above). And that’s the conservative estimate. If debt outstanding grows at a rate of 1.2 times the region’s growth rate, the region’s corporate debt will hit $32.5 billion. Using either estimate, in 2017 the Asia-Pacific region will have more debt outstanding that US, the euro zone, Canada and the UK combined.

Inflation in the euro zone fell from 1.7% in March to 1.2% in April (pdf), responding to a slowing regional economy. That’s the slowest inflation rate for the region since April 2010. Even excluding energy prices, which have fallen significantly this year, inflation in the euro area sank from 1.8% in March to 1.4% last month.

It’s no secret that Greece’s economy is a mess. In the country’s sixth year of recession, unemployment is nearing 27% and 64.2% of young people are out of work. But there are signs of improvement, and investors are taking note.

Foreign banks are giving US regulators flak for setting rules about how they operate on domestic soil. Michael S. Gibson, director of the division of banking supervision and regulation at the Federal Reserve, is helping fan the flames. In a speech he gave today, Gibson signalled that US regulators are going to hold international regulators accountable with a new rule that discourages foreign banks from doing business in the US.

Euro zone economic growth in the the first quarter of 2013 fell 1.0% from the same period a year earlier, down from a 0.9% contraction in the fourth quarter of 2012—a sign that the monetary union’s recession is picking up speed.

Argentina’s courts, in a welcome moment of sanity, have overruled attempts (link in Spanish) by Argentina’s government to prevent anyone who isn’t the government from publishing a figure for inflation that isn’t what the government says it is.

Today, approximately 850 German workers went on strike at two warehouses operated by online retailer Amazon—the first strike in the company’s history. The workers’ demands aren’t just about problems at Amazon. They speak to a larger issue at the heart of the euro crisis: Germany has for years artificially suppressed wages, skewing competitiveness across the region.

The numbers: EADS saw order intake for its Airbus division surge 496.3% from the first quarter of 2012, contributing to the firm’s total profits of €243 million ($315 million) for the quarter.

International regulators have been working on ways to replace Libor, the world’s most important benchmark financial rate, which was tainted by scandal last year. But they seem to be saying different things about how to do it.

Last week, we reported that African debt issuers were some of the biggest winners of global monetary easing policy—and that this “winning” also comes with risk. The same thing could also be happening in Asia, where businesses have flooded the corporate bond market. Companies, particularly in rapidly growing Southeast Asian economies, have been taking advantage of low interest rates to borrow on the cheap. Singaporean, Korean and Thai businesses have led the charge for new money in recent years.

Maersk Line tweeted this photo of its container ship, the Maersk Alabama, shooting water into the ocean.

We’re hardly the first to point out that weird things have been happening in the market since late 2008, when the Federal Reserve started buying mortgage-backed securities as part of a new-fangled venture called “quantitative easing.” That, in addition to similar asset-purchase programs in the UK and low interest rates around the world has left investors in a desperate “search for yield.”

Unemployment in the United States is still high at 7.5%. Big corporations are continuing to hoard profits. The youth are doomed. Yes, yes; we know.

The United States’ biggest banks—the ones that were “too big to fail” during the financial meltdown they helped to cause—have grown even larger since the crisis. The Wall Street reforms of the Dodd-Frank Act, critics argue, clearly aren’t working.

The two European countries worst hit by the region’s economic crisis—Greece and Portugal—both reported their latest unemployment data today.

The massive cargo ship operators responsible for moving goods across the world could be nearing the end of a years-long rough patch. Many shippers attempted to bulk up their fleets to meet rising consumer demand in the years before the recession, only to find that demand gone by 2009 and 2010, when the ships they ordered were finally delivered.

The best investment idea at Ira Sohn 2013 could be all about shorting everything that’s associated with the voracious Chinese demand for commodities, a symptom of policies that attempted to quell–but really just put on hold–the effects of the financial crisis.

Economists have settled on Slovenia as the next euro problem country. Small, with an estimated GDP of $45.6 billion in 2012, Slovenia immediately calls to mind the last failing euro-zone country to dominate headlines: Cyprus. Whether or not that is an apt comparison, Slovenia is on the brink.

The numbers. Spanish telecom Telefónica took a hit in the first quarter of 2013. Revenue from its Latin American operations fell to €7.2 billion ($9.5 billion) from €7.5 billion a year before, and revenues from Europe fell to €6.7 billion from €7.6 billion in Q1 2012. Total revenues fell 8.8%.

The numbers. Societe Generale: good. Credit Agricole: not so much. Both French megabanks reported positive net income for the first quarter of 2013—definitely a good sign, but not a great one.

The US Treasury announced that it would begin another round of sales of General Motors stock, with the hope of getting rid of its remaining 17.7% stake in the company in the next 12 to 15 months. Unfortunately for US taxpayers, this means the Treasury is essentially accepting a loss of $17.51 per share.