we have five hours before trading starlts on wall street and anything can happen between now and then. absolutely. the way europe s going these days, everything probably will happen between now and the opening of wall street. have a busy week ahead. the fate of the euro may overshadow the fourth quarter earnings. they kick off the day with alcoa. let s go to randy on what investors are going to be focusing on this week. no shortage of news expected. that s exactly right. the leaders of germany and france will be meeting this week. they ll be talking about how to save the euro over the next three months. the euro is at a 16-month low against the u.s. dollar. then on wednesday ms. merkel is going to be speaking with mario monti, the italian prime minister. that is in advance of italy s first bond auction of the year. that is set for friday. in its last bond auction of last year yields on its ten year debt
nina, at the moment most people are saying that there will be some sort of recession. it may be mild, but there definitely will be negative growth in europe this year. yeah, particularly considering as we ve got unemployment standing at about 10.3% for the eurozone and growing every single day. 2012 it seems, as you were just saying, andrew, may not be a walk in the park for europe, but let s point out that some people are doing quite nicely. one of these people is the head of world banking scotland. john hurricane. the financial times is reporting today that this particular individual is in line of a bonus of almost $7 million. the package of shares and options will be thanks to his help in restructuring the bank, but that particular restructuring will be putting about 10,000 jobs at risk in the particular division that mr. hurricane himself runs. that s unlikely to impress british taxpayers who bailed them out by buying an 83% stake in it after its balance sheet blew out during the
show you, things can go awry. this happens. vail resort is operating, 15% your shares are down since christmas weekend. 15 is a big number there. that is how many less people are visiting. you don t have snow, you don t go skiing. that s the way the math is going to work. the way the jet stream has been working is we are in what s called a positive arctic oscillation. what that basically means is that we do not allow the arctic air, it s there, it is not allowed to come down. we haven t opened the flood gates here as far as the jet stream is concerned. we have continued with this mild winter in north america and in europe. the exact opposite is what we had last year which is weaker polar winds. that allowed for the arctic air masses to spill on in. you had the significant amounts of snow again in the uk. we cannot predict these oscillations but we can tell you
when they re happening. europe, beginning to see some changes here. we are snowing here so some changes in europe as opposed to north america. i think we ll be looking much better. as you know, the alpine region here has been getting snowed on the last few weeks. certainly some good news there in europe but not so much in the western u.s. nina? ivan, as always, many thanks for that. andrew? nina, i don t know what ivan was up to yesterday and i don t want to know to be honest. sunday was pants free metro ride day. that s right. on subway systems around the world commuters stripped to their underwear in an annual prank that began in new york city a decade ago. if you re wondering why, organizers say it was just a bit of fun. doesn t look like it s specific either. bottoms up from passengers all the way from washington to poland. you ve got to wonder why they d want to do it in the winter though.
here the european economic data last week really showed significant weakness. let s hone in on two particular economies that aren t growing and are facing big austerity measures at the moment, we re talking about italy and spain. these two countries have been at the forefront of investors worries when it comes to raising money on the bond markets. they have more bond sales this week. what are you expecting? i m expecting high yields, nina. they came out over the weekend and said they felt italy didn t require further austerity. investors remain to be convinced of this. we have seen these ltros by the ecb. we have a meeting this week. i think more than that, bond yields about 7% in italy are significantly unsustainable. as you quite rightly said on friday, there is a bond auction for both italian and spanish debt. i think what this summit really needs to focus on is trying to get those bond yields down by promoting growth policies within europe. one of the other ways that