Comment, news and other offerings from Monday’s FT,
Wolfgang Münchau: No happy new year for the eurozone 
The longer the eurozone’s crisis drags on, the more radical, and improbable, any solutions must be, writes the FT’s Münchau. In his view, the crisis requires ‘Europeanisation’ of the banking sector, common labour and product market rules and a minimal fiscal union with a single European bond. Europe’s political establishment feels such a radical response is unwarranted and politically infeasible. The first assessment is wrong. As the world emerges from its Christmas stupor, it discovers the second may well be right.
Analysis: Europe’s star-crossed levers
After a year ultimately dominated by a sovereign debt crisis that triggered emergency financial rescues of Greece and Ireland – the first such bail-outs in the euro era – the EU’s priorities appear to have undergone a profound shift, write Nikki Tait and Tony Barber. Stopping bond market contagion from spreading to Portugal, Spain and beyond, and putting the eurozone’s economic governance on a stable basis, seem the most urgent tasks that face EU policymakers returning from their winter break.
Tony Jackson: The elusive search for an equity strategy
Here we are again: the FTSE 100 nudging back through 6,000, and shares in Facebook changing hands at a purported 25 times revenues. One of these days, the equity market will finally have lift-off. Is this it?, asks the FT’s Jackson. Maybe not.
Lucy Kellaway’s awards for management guff
In her annual prizes to companies and individuals who have shown the greatest flair in butchering the English language or in talking through their hats, Kellaway notes that the quality of the jargon in 2010 was “so outstandingly good it has shifted every paradigm in the book”. Thus her first award in the 2010 Management Guff Awards is a brand new category for Daft New Names for Common Nouns. Ian Freed, vice-president of Amazon Kindle, gets a silver medal for renaming books “reading containers”, but Toyota, which rebranded the car as a “sustainable mobility solution”, scoops the gold.
Gavyn Davies: A week in global macro
Davies launches the first of a series of (usually) weekend comments on what he learned in the past week about the global economy and financial markets. Last week there was a great deal of new evidence suggesting that the global upswing is gathering powerful momentum as the year begins, especially in the US. But, he writes, the problems of the eurozone periphery show no sign of ending. Rising food prices are becoming a severe headache. And the Aussies have lost interest in cricket.
Amar Bhidé: To fix our banks we must go back to the ’70s
Brazil’s moves last week to stem the rise of its currency reflect the growing anxiety in many emerging economies about inflows of hot money, writes Bhidé, professor at the Fletcher School and author of ‘A Call for Judgment’. Fickle deposits in banks – ancient enablers of calamitous booms and busts in credit – deserve even wider attention. It is time to prohibit all banks – and depository institutions like money market funds – from paying more than the risk-free government bill rate. In short, we need to cap rates on all short-term deposits.
Lex: China in Europe
Like any modern great power, China wants to be seen as helpful and powerful but not exploitative or domineering, notes Lex. The tentative and modest offers it has made so far to help Europe out of its sovereign debt crisis (it was reported last week to have pledged to spend €6bn on Spanish bonds) look like an effort to find that middle ground.
Li Keqiang: The world should not fear a growing China
The progress China has made in development is tremendous, but it is still a developing country, facing grave challenges, with a long way to go before it can build a moderately prosperous society, writes Li, China’s vice premier. China’s development will not be possible without the world – and world development needs China. China is committed to work even more closely with other countries to create a bright future for all.
The Monday Interview: David Zaslav
Having made Sarah Palin a reality TV star and coaxed Oprah Winfrey from network to cable television, Daviz Zaslav, chief executive of Discovery Communications, is now spending more time in places like Moscow. As one of US media’s few recent success stories looks to acquisitions, launches and technology to extend its position as the world’s top non-fiction TV company, Zaslav discusses his plans and ideas with the FT’s media editor Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson.
In-depth: Detroit auto show 2011
The 23rd North American International Auto Show plans to have more than 500 vehicles on display. For most leading carmakers, the show presents an opportunity to demonstrate they are shaking off the setbacks of the past few years. FT reporters assess this year’s offerings and examine the influx of non-US carmakers to the show.
BeyondBrics: FTfm – cautionary tales from Taiwan
Domestic fund managers across emerging markets might do well to consider the experience of their Taiwanese counterparts. Taiwan-based managers have struggled to gain traction due to the popularity of so-called “offshore” managers – registered outside Taiwan by international fund companies – who pay higher fees to distributors and who tend to have better known names, as Glori Ye reports in Monday’s FTfm.