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523 European banks borrowed 489 billion euros from the European Central Bank on Dec. 21, 2011, under the newly created Long Term Financing Operation of the ECB. This is designed to meet the financing needs of European banks which are shutoff from normal financing of selling unsecured bonds to private investors because of market anxiety. Much of this is for replacing other outstanding ECB loans, with analysts estimating about 190 billion euros of new liquidity being injected into the banking system. This also has the effect of reducing the borrowing rates for government bonds. In Spain the government sold 5.6 billion euros of government bonds at an auction on Dec. 20, 2011, with the interest rates dropping from 5.7% a month earlier to 1.7%. Small and midsize banks in Spain helped surging demand by buying the bonds to use as collateral for three year loans from the ECB at 1%.

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Steven Lee Myers provides an exceptionally good report from Russia on the 2014 Sochi Olympics. He describes an effort by the Putin administration in Russia to develop Sochi which extends for 90 miles along the Black Sea, the only subtropical seashore in Russia. Here Myers interviews Pakhomov, a Putin supporter, who is Mayor of Sochi, to get a picture of how Putin supporters see this effort. Pakhomov says this part of Russia was never developed and foreigners have a poor view of Russia, with one westerner telling him that Russia had little except vodka and bears. For the first time the entire Sochi areas has seen a massive infrastructure effort with roads, railways and a new airport. Myers gets a different picture from Yulia Naberezhnaya, a scientist who is a Putin critic and environmental leader in the Western Caucusus, who he interviews after meeting at a bus stop in Sochi. Naberezhnaya heads Environmental Watch of the North Caucusus which sees the environmental laws being ignored in construction work. The country is divided with nationalistic feeling running high before the Olympics, and a friend of Naberezhnaya finding herself on the opposite side with work in the security services. She warns her to be careful- something Naberezhnaya says has Kafkesque overtones. Myers also meets Boris Nemtsov, a senior official in the Yeltsin government, who participated in street protests during the recent elections in Russia, and is critical of the money spent in this Olympics. Estimates of the money spent run as high as $51 billion, in comparison the Olympics in Beijing, China cost about $40 billion. Dmitri Chernyshenko, president of the Sochi Olympics Organizing Committee sees the project as one that unites the nation, while critics such as Nemtsov see it as a huge overspending and corruption favoring Putin's friends in the business community. Myers is acting Moscow Bureau Chief for the NYT and has done extensive interviewing for this report, including an interview with Vladimir Yakunin, head of Soviet Railways. Yakunin says his company's investment of $1.3 billion will take 20 years to recover but puts it on the scale of the Trans-Siberian Railway build by Czar Nicholas II, which helped bring Russia its current borders reaching to the Far East. And yet the question of cost is never far from people's minds, coming at a time when growth is slowing in Russia- emerging markets currency values incluing the ruble are declining and they are having a tough time attracting foreign investment. A member of the International Olympic Committee, Gian-Franco Kasper, is reported to have told Swiss SRF radio that about a third of the spending on Sochi was lost because of corruption and excessive costs....

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Energy Aspects, London based consultancy, estimates non-OPEC production declines of 700,000 barrels a day, up from previous forecasts of 200,000-300,000 barrels a day. Demand is expected to be higher than supply by June 2016, and drawing down inventory from that time. Agreement to freeze production is uncertain at a Doha meeting of OPEC countries, with Iran planning to increase production from 3.1 million barrels a day currently to 4 million barrels a day. Saudis increased production to 10 million barrels a day in 2015, and Iran is determined to increase its production to the higher level. The price of U.S. oil rebounded to $42.17 by April 2016.

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Xi Jinping visits a dairy farm in Ireland and kicks a ball at a Gaelic football game. A new view of the Chinese leader up close in contacts with people in Ireland. Ireland takes on the presidency of the EU in 2013.

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China's new leader Xi Jinping and the prospects for U.S. and European business. Little is known of how Xi will change things except for his personal style during his visit to Iowa during the U.S. trip.

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The asset price bubbles developing in many countries in 2010-2012 with loose monetary policy.

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In a continuing effort to make certain all of the massive supplies of palm oil it uses- 1.36 million tons of palm oil a year- comes from sustainable sources, Unilever plans an investment of $100 million for a palm oil processing plant in Indonesia. Unilever's plan is to reach the goal of getting all of the palm oil it uses from sustainable sources by 2020, up from only 2% in 2011. This is part of its committment to the environment. Palm oil goes into making Dove soap, Magnum ice cream, and Vaseline lotion. The deforestation issue is becoming serious as land is cleared for palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia, and the only way for Unilever to be certain that it is done in a sustainable way is to move closer to the source of supplies.

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Financing for Shanghui's acqusition of Smithfield Foods comes from Morgan Stanley, which will provide $3 billion. Morgan Stanley is the advisor on the deal and plans to sell debt to other banks, including Chinese banks. Shanghui has as its largest shareholder a number of Chinese private equity firms grouped together under CDH Investments, with 33.7% stake. This includes New Horizon Capital, co-founded by the son of China's former premier Wen Jiabao. Temasek Holdings of Singapore and Goldman Sachs private equity unit have ownership stakes. According to its website managers and some employees own 30% of the company. Shanghui sales were $6.2 billion in 2012, increasing from $5.5 billion in 2011, and has 60,000 employees. The sales are much smaller than Smithfield Foods but Shanghui has a much larger valuation.

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Douglas Peterson, chief operating officer of Citibank, will become the new president of Standard & Poor's. He brings useful experience facing a parliamentary inquiry in Japan, after Citibank ran into trouble with Japan's securities laws. He was also the bank's chief auditor and worked with regulators for the introduction of major accounting rules.