In this three-part video interview, Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, discusses with Chrystia Freeland, FT’s US managing editor, a range of topical issues concerning the global economy, new economic hotspots, China’s currency peg and lessons from the crisis.

Part 1: China and the dollar Zoellick talks about President Barack Obama’s recent trip to China and the effects of Chinese currency being pegged to the dollar. He also discusses increased criticism from China of US economic policy.

Click here or on the image below to view Part 1 of the interview.

Part 2: World economy Zoellick talks about the state of the world economy, including the financial recovery, concerns about protectionism and the role the US consumer will play in the recovery. Additionally, he discusses America’s fiscal position, the weakening US

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A bias to buy dollars remains…Looks like coordinated jawboning…Fujii now talks about intervening! Gold remains below $1,000…And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

Good day… And a Terrific Tuesday to you! Well… Stop the presses… You know the presses that are talking about the countries that are on the docket to begin a rate hike cycle, because… Russia has thrown a cat among the pigeons this morning with a rate CUT… Let me tell you why this is a big deal…

Well, when everyone is thinking that the G0-GO countries of Norway, Australia, and Brazil will probably begin their rate hike cycles this year, and other won’t be far behind… While the U.S. drags its feet and wallows in the zero rate mud… The thinking was that the rate differentials to the dollar would begin to widen, causing even more pain for the dollar. And, the reason these countries were able to raise rates

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Oil fell to below $65 a barrel today, Monday and touched a five-week low earlier in the session, pressured by doubts over the prospects for a recovery in the global economy and energy demand.

The U.S. jobless rate reached a 26-year high and Euro zone unemployment is at the highest in a decade, reports showed last week. Oil fell even after militants attacked oil installations in major African exporter Nigeria.

“There’s a general retreat caused by lack of risk appetite,” said Mike Wittner, oil analyst at Societe Generale. “For a couple of months, we perhaps got a bit too optimistic and several markets got ahead of themselves.”

U.S. crude fell $2.24 from Thursday’s close to $64.49 a barrel by 1412 GMT. It traded as low as $63.40, the lowest intraday price since May 28. Brent crude fell $1.30 from Friday’s close to $64.31.

NYMEX floor trading was closed on Friday because of the U.S. Independence Day

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Another Treasury auction today…  Spending habits come back to haunt reps…  Some healing in the currencies…  10 Banks to repay TARP today… And Now… Today’s Pfennig! Good day… And a Terrific Tuesday to you! Well… I sure stirred up the hornet’s nest yesterday… Some people didn’t think I should express my opinion… But that’s OK… Here’s the skinny… I wrote yesterday about the farce that the jobs report was, and what a feeble job the media did in reporting the “real numbers”… I then threw something in the Pfennig that I don’t normally do, just to see what was more important to people… The fact that their Gov’t lies to them, or the fact that they don’t see eye-to-eye with me on the President…

Given the response, I’d say that most had their eye on the ball with the jobs farce… And that’s all I’m going to say from here on out…

One person did ask

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The S&P 500 rally is beginning to look a bit tired.  The price action is more sideways than up and the volume is declining.  That may just be the pause that refreshes, or it may be the pause before a retracement.

Some important indicators, such as the VIX, the rate spread between LIBOR and Treasuries, and the relative performance of high yield and investment grade corporate bonds are supportive of the positive S&P 500 direction.

On the other hand, the cyclic price action demonstrated in the past 15 years, which is well tracked by trend following methods, suggests that we are not yet in a bull phase.

Of course there is more upward movement somewhere in the future to get us to a bull phase, and we could be in that transitional period now. It’s just that we have a hard time looking past the the economic situation which really stinks once your

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A detailed report from the National Association of Business Economics (NABE) says the U.S. economy will recover in the third quarter after a continued contraction in the second.

NABE said the near-term setback will be a result of a “sharp retrenchment” in business investment, but the billions in government efforts to invigorate the economy will soon offset that.

“While the overall tone remains soft, there are emerging signs that the economy is stabilizing,” said NABE president, Chris Varvares, who is also president of Macroeconomic Advisers. “The survey found that business economists look for the recession to end soon, but that the economic recovery is likely to be considerably more moderate than those typically experienced following steep declines.”

NABE also downgraded its growth forecast for the next few quarters - with the second quarter contracting 1.8%, followed by a meager 1.2% growth in the second half. The end result

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Agricultural Bank of China Raises $7.3 Billion; Banks Applying to Repay TARP; Fiat CEO Confident About Opel Bid; World Bank Prez Sees Year-End Recovery; Derivatives Shrink to $592 Trillion; GE Reaches Debt Funding Goals for 2009; UAW & GM Still at Odds on Labor Agreement; Home Depot Beats Street

Agricultural Bank of China raised 50 billion yuan ($7.3 billion) in the nation’s biggest corporate bond sale. The goal of the bond sale was to raise capital and help set up an initial public offering, Bloomberg reported. A handful of banks have applied to repay the billions they borrowed from the U.S. government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Sources told Reuters that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) are two of the banks eager to ...

The world’s power elite, the Bilderberg club, is getting together today at the five-star Nafsika Astir Palace Hotel in Greece. US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner will be there. So will World Bank president (and Goldman Sachs alumnus) Robert Zoellick; head of Deutsche Bank Jo Ackermann; and European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet. The topic of discussion is the global economic meltdown.

Notes can reveal that the pre-meeting booklet for the meeting is predicting “either a prolonged, agonising depression that dooms the world to decades of stagflation, decline and poverty – or an intense but shorter depression that paves the way for a new sustainable economic world order, with less sovereignty but more efficiency.”

Contrary to the prevailing analysis, we believe that the Obama and Bush administration insistence on protecting banks at the expense of the taxpayer is the result of a Machiavellian effort by Goldman Sachs and other major banks to influence U.S. economic policy by infiltrating the corridors of power.

Today, we duly note that Goldman Sachs has just hired former Barney Frank staffer Michael Paese to be its top Washington lobbyist. This position was formerly held by Mark Patterson, the current chief of staff at the Treasury.

Pease and Patterson are not the only ones to pass through the revolving door between Washington and Goldman. Bush’s Treasury secretary, Hank “The Hammer” Paulson is a former Goldman CEO. And his replacement, Tim Geithner, was mentored by Gerald Corrigan, a former New York Fed president and current partner and managing director of the Office of the Chairman of Goldman Sachs.

Who else was President Obama considering

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL - April 27, 2009 - Zacks Equity Research picks Teva Pharmaceuticals (TEVA) as Bull of the Day and Amgen, Inc. (AMGN) as Bear of the Day. In addition, the analysts at Zacks Equity Research discuss the latest on Wells Fargo (WFC), US Bancorp (USB) and SunTrust (STI).

Full analysis of all these stocks is available at: http://at.zacks.com/?id=2678

Bull of the Day

We are initiating coverage on Teva Pharmaceuticals (TEVA) with a Buy rating and a price target of $52. We are impressed with the company's strong performance in 2008 despite the global slowdown and are optimistic on growth prospects.

We expect Teva to continue posting strong revenues and earnings going forward thanks to new product launches, both generic and branded. We are also pleased to see Teva's progress with its branded and biogenerics pipeline. Biogenerics should help drive growth in the long-term.

Meanwhile, the

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