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A week before reaching the peak of British political power, Gordon Brown thanked a group of bankers for helping him usher in a “new golden age.”

It didn’t last long — for them or for him.

The decade-long boom for which Brown took credit as chancellor of the exchequer has turned into a bust, haunting him since he replaced Tony Blair as prime minister in 2007 and shattering the prize he worked 24 years to earn.

Like Anthony Eden, Winston Churchill’s World War II foreign minister who was undone as prime minister by the 1956 Suez Crisis, Brown has been derailed by events in the very field where he made his name.

“You’ve got the Eden problem,” says Anthony Seldon, author of the 2005 biography “Blair.” “There was a man who was brilliant as foreign secretary, but couldn’t cope with the job upgrade.”

For Brown, banking failures and a deepening recession have dominated his time in office, diverting him from plans to reduce poverty and improve schools.

The 1.9 percent first-quarter economic contraction, which was reported today, underlines the problems facing Brown: the biggest annual decline in output since the war; the widest budget deficit on record and the highest unemployment in more than a decade — this after his government took over four banks, including Royal Bank of Scotland Plc, to prevent their collapse.

Brown’s 22-month-long premiership has been a catalogue of political setbacks: a last-moment retreat after signaling he would call an early election; the reversal of a tax increase on low-wage earners; and this month the sacking of his media adviser over a smear campaign aimed at opposition lawmakers.

Trailing the Tories

Brown, who must call an election by June 2010, has trailed David Cameron’s Conservative opposition in every poll since January 2008. A February survey by Ipsos-Mori Ltd. put the gap at 20 percent.

“I don’t think he really realized how easy he had it as chancellor, and that when you’re prime minister you’re in the front line,” says Steven Fielding, head of the Centre for British Politics at Nottingham University.

The strain shows, say current and former Brown aides: Among other things, it has inflamed a temper that has always been the subject of gallows humor among those who work with him, they say.

The prime minister, 58, has hurled pens and even a stapler at aides, according to one; he says he once saw the leader of Britain’s 61 million people shove a laser printer off a desk in a rage. Another aide was warned to watch out for “flying Nokias” when he joined Brown’s team.

The ‘News Sandwich’

One staffer says a colleague developed a technique called a “news sandwich” — first telling the prime minister about a recent piece of good coverage before delivering bad news, and then moving quickly to tell him about something good coming soon.

“This is not an account I recognize,” Brown’s spokesman, Michael Ellam, told reporters today. “It is the sort of nonsense that you might expect to read in diary columns.”

With more than a year to the next election, there may still be time for Brown, whose experience dwarfs that of the 42-year- old Cameron and 37-year-old shadow chancellor George Osborne, to rebound. “There are no iron laws of politics; anything could happen,” says Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government at the University of Oxford. “Obviously, the Conservatives are favorites at the moment, but it is perfectly possible people will say, ‘It’s a difficult time, are we willing to trust things to an unknown combination?”

A ‘Furious’ Brown

Still, the atmosphere in No. 10 Downing Street, where Brown lives and works, is grim. In his less-than two years in office, he has already gone through two chiefs of staff — Tom Scholar and Stephen Carter — and five advisers on strategy.

The latest episode to provoke Brown’s anger came over the Easter weekend, when he learned that newspapers had obtained e- mails written by his media adviser, Damian McBride, containing plans to spread slurs about the personal lives and families of leading Conservatives. McBride quit and Ellam told reporters April 14 the incident had made the prime minister “furious.”

Brown frequently says his background as the son of a Church of Scotland minister gave him a sense of morality, a duty to help the poor and a strong work ethic. Before entering Parliament in 1983, in the same election as Blair, Brown was a politics lecturer and a current-affairs editor for Scottish television.

Years Spent Waiting

Much of Brown’s political career has been spent waiting payday loan help. Fourteen years passed between when he won his seat in a district near Edinburgh and when Labour finally took power. In that time, he was overtaken by Blair, the younger and less experienced politician with whom he shared an office in their early days. When Labour formed a government in 1997, Blair, now 55, and not Brown headed it.

It took another 10 years before Brown finally reached his goal. Once he did, he floundered.

Within three months, he called off plans for an early election at the last moment — and denied that his decision had been influenced by the narrowing of his lead in opinion polls. It was a “catastrophic error” that set a tone for what was to come, Seldon says.

“Before that, he was seen as strong and competent,” says Anthony Wells, a pollster with YouGov Plc. “Afterwards, he was seen as weak and ineffectual, almost cowardly.”

Taking Over

In the months that followed, he came under increasing pressure to admit he made a mistake in his last budget as chancellor. In March 2007, with Blair in his final months as prime minister and Brown his likely but not certain successor, the end of the chancellor’s budget statement held a surprise: a cut in the income-tax rate to 20 percent from 22 percent.

What Brown didn’t mention was the removal of a 10 percent “starting rate,” with the result that lower earners ended up paying more. It was more than a year before he backed down, after Labour lawmakers threatened to vote against the 2008 budget.

“His long years in opposition, both before and during government, encouraged a preoccupation with tactics over strategy, as demonstrated by tax and the non-election,” says Martin Farr, a lecturer in politics at Newcastle University.

Just this month, two of Blair’s former Cabinet ministers, Stephen Byers and Alan Milburn, said they had been victims of McBride during the decade Brown was campaigning to secure his succession, when his chief concern was to prevent anyone from challenging his position.

Promise and Success

As Brown has struggled through Britain’s financial crisis, there have been moments of promise, and even success. With some of the U.K.’s biggest banks on the brink of collapse, Brown moved in October to take stakes in RBS, HBOS Plc and Lloyds TSB Bank Plc. Princeton University economist Paul Krugman, on the day he won the Nobel Prize, suggested Brown had “saved the world.”

“He first dealt with the banking crisis, and made sure there wasn’t a run on the banks; we take that for granted,” says Oxford’s Bogdanor. “His weakness is that he hasn’t yet been able to explain these matters clearly to the country, as for example Roosevelt did in the U.S. in 1933.”

The summit of the Group of 20 leading economies in London at the start of this month gave Brown another chance to show leadership. He traveled the world to make the case for coordinated stimulus, increased regulation of markets and free trade.

‘Very Lucky’

“The world is very lucky to have Gordon Brown as host of this G-20,” John Kirton, professor of political science at the University of Toronto and co-founder of its G-8 Research Group, said at the time. “There’s not a single G-20 leader who’s had that many years experience as a finance minister. He knows how to work this crowd, he knows these issues. Most of the leaders, if you start talking about this stuff, they don’t get it.”

That experience cuts both ways. The Conservatives point to his June 20, 2007, “Golden Age” speech to financiers at the Mansion House in London as evidence of complacency about the economy. Brown doesn’t these days repeat his opening salute in that speech to bankers’ “ingenuity and creativity.”

As chancellor, Brown delivered Britain’s longest expansion in two centuries; now, “history is pulling away the success he had,” says Lawrence Black, a history lecturer at Durham University and author of “The Political Culture of the Left in Affluent Britain.” “Brown had too much belief in the dynamism and vibrancy of international markets. His economic success has led to economic turmoil.”

The prime minister “can be regarded almost as a Shakespearean character, in the way his career and personality have brought him to this point,” says Newcastle’s Farr.

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The Obama administration may direct banks judged to need capital after stress tests to disclose how they plan to get additional funds when the government reveals the results May 4, a person familiar with the matter said.

Officials are discussing a release that will show the assessments for each of the 19 biggest U.S. banks, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because a decision hasn’t been made. Lenders would specify whether they will issue new stock, seek a conversion of government preference shares, or rely on additional taxpayer funds, according to the person.

By pushing for detailed disclosure, the administration is seeking to give the public the ability to differentiate the health of the nation’s major lenders. The move would also address the concerns of some investors that banks needing extra money will be punished without a detailed strategy already in place to get the capital.

“Transparency is critical,” said Bill Brown, a visiting professor at Duke University School of Law in North Carolina and a former managing director at Morgan Stanley. “While banks have pushed to keep the kimono closed, the stress tests have forced it open.”

Financial regulators remain concerned about investors’ reaction to a bank that wants to seek private money but doesn’t have a firm commitment, one official said. The Treasury’s capital-assistance program gives companies six months to obtain the funding.

Provisional Capital

In one scenario under discussion, firms that fall between those strong enough to forgo new capital and those that need injections, the Treasury would provide the money immediately and the banks would announce that the investment is provisional.

“Where there is a need for additional capital,” banks will “work out with their primary supervisors what’s the best mix” of options, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told a congressional oversight panel in Washington two days ago faxless payday loans. Choices include converting previous government investments from preferred to common stock, getting money from private sources or tapping the $700 billion financial-rescue program, he said.

The Treasury and banking regulators are still working out the final details of how to reveal the test results and plans could change, said the person. Generally, the regulators favor less disclosure because bank exam data is confidential, while the Treasury advocates releasing more details.

Stocks Drop

U.S. stocks retreated yesterday, led by financial shares. Morgan Stanley tumbled 9 percent after posting a wider-than- forecast loss, while KeyCorp tumbled 13 percent after BMO Capital Markets said credit problems are spreading. Wells Fargo & Co. fell 3.4 percent after Chief Financial Officer Howard Atkins said “credit may not have turned yet.”

Banks are expected to begin getting preliminary results from the reviews on April 24, the same day the Federal Reserve is scheduled to release the methodology for the exams.

The central bank is leading the assessments, which are designed to ensure that firms have enough capital to weather a deeper economic downturn over the coming two years.

Regulators conducting the stress tests are increasingly focusing on the quality of loans banks made after finding wide variations in underwriting standards, a regulatory official said earlier this week. They concluded that banks’ lending practices need to be given as much weight as macroeconomic scenarios in determining the health of each bank, the person said.

In his prepared statement for the April 21 oversight hearing, Geithner said “the vast majority of banks have more capital than they need to be considered well capitalized by their regulators.”

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Thailand plans to reduce government spending by 13 percent next year as anti-government riots and the global recession push the economy into a contraction in 2009, hurting state revenue.

The government aims to cut its expenditure by 251.7 billion baht ($7.1 billion) to 1.7 trillion in the year starting Oct. 1, Bantoon Supakvanij, director-general of the Bureau of the Budget, said today after a weekly Cabinet meeting. The spending plan will result in a budget deficit of 350 billion baht, he said.

“The economy is slowing more than expected,” he told reporters in Bangkok. The final budget plan must receive approval from the parliament.

Thailand’s economy may shrink between 4 percent and 5 percent this year, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said today faxless payday loan. Bangkok has been under emergency rule since April 12 after anti- government protests led to two deaths and injured 135 people, denting consumer spending and tourism revenue at a time when the global recession is crimping exports.

The budget is based on the assumption that the economy may “improve by one or two percentage points next year,” Bantoon said, without elaborating.

This year’s revenue may miss the target of 1.58 trillion baht by more than 10 percent, Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij said last month.

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Houston’s deputy controller, James Moncur, figured last May the fourth-largest U.S. city escaped the unraveling credit markets by refinancing some of its $1.8 billion of auction-rate bonds.

Instead, Houston wound up paying 15 percent interest on the new securities, not the money-market rates city officials had anticipated. The so-called variable-rate demand notes backfired when investors fled the market in October, forcing the bank that had guaranteed the bonds, Brussels-based Dexia SA, to buy them.

“This was like round two of the great financial crisis of 2008,” Moncur, 56, said. “We were under the impression we had taken care of the problem.”

The $479 billion market for the securities, whose rates are typically reset by banks every day or week, is turning into a quagmire for local officials who embraced a financing strategy they didn’t fully understand. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said last month that U.S. taxpayers may wind up as the buyers of last resort for the debt, known as VRDNs.

“A large volume” of variable-rate demand notes were forced back to banks and “exposed the vulnerabilities of the VRDN market, raising questions about the desirability of its continuation as a significant vehicle for municipal finance,” Bernanke said in a March 31 letter to Representative James Moran, a Virginia Democrat.

Auction-Rate Collapse

VRDNs, like auction-rate bonds, offer borrowers short-term interest costs on longer-term debt because rates on the notes are reset at regular intervals. Auction-rate securities fell apart in February 2008 when bankers who had provided support for two decades abandoned the market, stranding investors with notes they couldn’t sell and borrowers with annualized interest as high as 20 percent.

Dozens of local governments sold VRDNs to pay off their auction-rate obligations. Lower-rated borrowers in the variable- rate market are required to have a guarantor, called a credit facility provider, who promises to buy bonds investors don’t want. Interest rates are set by banks at a level they expect investors will accept.

The market lost favor among municipalities this year as costs to guarantee the bonds increased and issuers incurred unexpected charges to get out of their privately negotiated transactions.

Sales of tax-exempt debt with variable interest rates plummeted 55 percent to $9.6 billion in the first three months of the year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. New issues dropped even as the average weekly rate on the securities fell below 1 percent, to as low as 0.48 percent on Feb. 4.

Rising Guarantee Cost

Houston agreed to pay the 15 percent annual rate for 60 days, Moncur said. Harris County, Texas, later bought $118 million of the city’s taxable VRDNs and the rate is currently 6.9 percent, he said. Houston is the Harris County seat.

Banks, reeling from almost $1.3 trillion in credit market losses since the start of 2007, raised the cost for providing guarantees as much as 10-fold, Concord, Massachusetts-based Municipal Market Advisors said in January.

Some borrowers that want to refinance VRDNs are stuck since the bonds are “often paired with interest-rate swaps that would be quite costly to unwind because many of the swaps are now underwater,” Bernanke said.

Municipalities use swaps — private agreements in which a borrower and another party agree to exchange interest rates — to create fixed-rate obligations by joining them with variable- rate debt. If the arrangements go awry, issuers have to pay fees to terminate the contracts.

The New York State Dormitory Authority wound up paying bankers $26.8 million to get out of $390 million of VRDNs last month, after Dexia increased the fees for its letter of credit to 0.5 percent from 0.27 percent and interest rates on the bonds rose as high as 8 fast cash advance.48 percent, according to public disclosures.

Negotiated Rates

Besides the cancellation fee, the dormitory authority paid $2.76 million to underwriters led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to sell about $500 million of new bonds.

As with all variable-rate notes and swaps, terms of the sale were set in negotiations with underwriters, not through competitive bidding. When fees from the new debt are added to interest, the total financing cost was 6.11 percent, according to Marc Violette, a Dormitory Authority spokesman.

The yield on the Bond Buyer 20 index of interest costs on 20-year general obligation bonds averaged 4.96 percent for the past year. The new dormitory bonds, like the old, were backed by state appropriations and financed the construction of mental health facilities.

Borrowers in the $2.69 trillion market for state and local government debt increased swap agreements while abandoning sales of bonds through competitive bidding.

Competitive Sales

Competitive sales reduce interest costs on municipal debt from 0.17 percentage point to 0.48 percentage point, according to a study by Mark D. Robbins, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut in West Hartford, and Bill Simonsen, a professor at the institution. The survey, titled “Persistent Underwriter Use and the Cost of Borrowing,” was published in the winter 2008 issue of the Municipal Finance Journal.

VRDN fees may increase because banks don’t want to risk being forced to buy bonds that investors shun, said Michael Marz, vice chairman of First Southwest Co. in Dallas, the third- largest financial adviser to state and local governments.

Most variable-rate debt requires a bank guarantee to be eligible for sale to money market funds, and banks are only willing to back the highest-rated credits, said George Friedlander, a municipal market analyst at Citigroup Inc., in an April 3 report.

Lower-Rated Jurisdictions

Local governments with credit ratings above A- can obtain letters of credit, while those with lower grades are struggling, said Michael Decker, co-chief executive officer of Alexandria, Virginia-based Regional Bond Dealers Association, which represents about 20 securities dealers and underwriters, most based outside New York.

Mendocino County, California, was rejected for a $26 million loan in a pool of borrowers seeking short-term funding for operating expenses because its rating was too low for the bank backing the debt, said Shari Schapmire, the county treasurer. Mendocino, which has an A- rating from Standard & Poor’s, may have to pay $750,000 more to get the money on its own, which may force officials to trim some of the government’s 1,400 workers, she said.

Variable-rate borrowers “are experiencing substantial increases” in costs, said Bernanke in his letter. The market for municipal variable-rate debt “appears to be under more stress” because investors have been putting their bonds back to the guarantor bank, he said.

Federal Aid

State and local governments have asked the U.S. government to provide guarantees for VRDNs as costs of bank assurances rise. U.S. Representative Barney Frank’s Financial Services Committee is writing legislation to help create a new backstop.

Houston’s decision to convert to variable-rate debt has drawn criticism from Councilman Peter Brown, who said officials shouldn’t have agreed to floating-rate debt with a 15 percent penalty rate, given the turmoil in financial markets.

“The city ended up holding the bag,” said Brown, who is running for mayor. “We should have been smarter so we were not put into this position.”

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Policies aimed at easing home-loan terms for troubled borrowers may not be as effective in preventing foreclosures as more-direct aid to homeowners, Federal Reserve economists found.

Job losses and falling home prices have a bigger impact on delinquencies than mortgage terms, and modifications aren’t necessarily a better deal for investors than foreclosures, according to a paper by two current and one former economist at the Boston Fed Bank and one Atlanta Fed researcher.

The conclusion poses a challenge to housing advocates and to some extent the prevailing views of President Barack Obama’s administration, Fed officials and other U.S. regulators. Obama announced a $75 billion plan in February that concentrates on refinancing or modifying loans for as many as 9 million homeowners.

“One of the most influential strands of thought contends that the crisis can be attenuated by changing the terms of ‘unaffordable’ mortgages,” the economists said in the paper posted on the Boston Fed’s Web site today. Yet policies aimed at reducing a borrower’s debt-to-income ratio “face important hurdles in addressing the housing crisis,” the authors said.

Instead, the government should consider alternatives such as loans to homeowners to bridge the loss of income for one or two years caused by unemployment, or helping borrowers become renters, the economists said.

Boston, Atlanta

The authors include Christopher Foote and Paul Willen, who are senior economists and policy advisers at the Boston Fed; Kristopher Gerardi, a research economist and assistant policy adviser at the Atlanta Fed; and Lorenz Goette, a professor at the University of Geneva and former economist at the Boston Fed loan until payday.

The paper doesn’t specifically discuss the merits of the White House plan.

The federal government has used policies to encourage loan modifications as a principal tool of attacking the surge in foreclosures over the past year. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, in a December speech, called for “greater standardization and efficiency” in programs to ease loan terms, while FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair has pressed the Treasury and mortgage companies to step of the pace of modifications.

Eric Rosengren, president of the Boston Fed, said in a January speech that loan servicers should be able to increase mortgage modifications as interest rates decline.

At the same time, many borrowers should be able to refinance through Federal Housing Administration loans, Rosengren said in the speech. Also, some borrowers just won’t be able to make their mortgage payments and could instead receive assistance to move to a rental property, he said.

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Jean-Pierre Danthine, who joins the Swiss central bank’s board next year, says the financial crisis will force a rethink of the economic models he worked with during his lifelong academic career.

“The enormous progress that we have made in monetary theory has led to excellent control of inflation,” he said in an interview with the Swiss daily Le Temps today. “Today, this progress looks only intermediary. It leaves a gaping hole, that of interaction with the financial world.”

The 58-year old professor of economics and finance will get a hands-on chance to address those shortcomings when he joins Philipp Hildebrand and Thomas Jordan on the Swiss National Bank’s governing board next year. Danthine, who has published on topics ranging from financial asset pricing to business cycles, joins a central bank that has run out of conventional monetary policy tools as it contends with falling prices, a contracting economy and the bailout of the country’s biggest bank, UBS AG.

“This will certainly be new for him,” said Ernst Baltensperger, professor of macroeconomics at the University of Bern and head of the SNB’s Gerzensee research foundation. “He has an outstanding reputation as a macroeconomist but he’s not particularly oriented towards monetary policy.”

Danthine will take over the part of the central bank responsible for implementing monetary policy. The SNB last month began buying Swiss franc bonds and weakening the currency to inject funds into the economy as interest rates approach zero.

Dual Citizen

“He has tremendously good judgement as an economist,” said Darrell Duffie, a professor of finance at Stanford University who spent last year on sabbatical at University of Lausanne with Danthine. “He’s able to bridge across areas and apply common sense in a way that’s perfectly suited to the climate he faces at the Swiss National Bank.”

Danthine, a dual citizen of Belgium and Switzerland, holds a doctorate in economics from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and has been head of the Swiss Finance Institute since its inception in 2005. He has also held visiting appointments at CUNY Graduate Center, University of Southern California and Universite Laval in Quebec.

In academic circles, Danthine is most known for his work on real business cycle theory, which argues that fiscal and monetary policy should not intervene to smooth short-term fluctuations, Baltensperger said.

The SNB has not subscribed to that theory in recent months. It has slashed 250 basis points from its benchmark rate since October, bringing the rate to 0.25 percent my credit score. With rates near zero, the SNB resorted to buying foreign currencies to weaken the franc and directly purchasing corporate bonds in a bid to cushion the impact of the recession.

Activist?

“He certainly does not have a particularly activist monetary approach,” said Joerg Baumberger, professor of monetary economics and finance at the University of St. Gallen. Still, “he’s not an ideologue. He can also be pragmatic when necessary.”

Danthine, in the interview with Le Temps, said he expects the economy to improve by January of next year, except for unemployment.

“We will have to make sure that the turnaround happens under the best possible conditions, and that the major risk is no longer deflation but inflation,” he said.

The bank is also grappling with $38.7 billion in toxic assets it took over from UBS, as part of a government rescue the SNB helped engineer in October. Zurich-based UBS has amassed the biggest losses of any European lender from the credit crisis. Its unprecedented rescue has fuelled calls for more controls on banks and executive compensation.

Incentives

SNB President-designate Philipp Hildebrand, in a speech on Feb. 5, said the central bank, the government and banking regulators must make the financial sector resilient and sustainable, by changing compensation and performance incentives for bank executives and ensuring that the country’s big banks can no longer put financial stability at risk.

Danthine, who has published extensively for more than 30 years, has argued that bonuses are making up too big a part of executive pay, and has questioned the rationale behind a series of consolidations in the banking industry.

His research includes articles entitled “On the Consequences of State Dependent Preferences for the Pricing of Financial Assets,” “Executive Compensation and Stock Options: An Inconvenient Truth,” and “Banking: Is Bigger Really Better?”

Married to Renee-Paulee, he has two children, including a son, Samuel, who has followed him into economics and is assistant professor of economics at the University of Quebec at Montreal.

“We’re not looking at a conventional economic crisis by any means, so you need someone who doesn’t have a doctrinaire, dogmatic attitude,” Duffie said. “You need that has common sense and is open minded and has great training as an economist. And that describes completely Jean-Pierre’s ability.”

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Zscaler Inc., a multi-tenant Software as a Service security company, said Wednesday it is expanding its distributed security network, sales and data center operations to Latin America.

Sunnyvale-based Zscaler said it opened two data centers in Mexico in a "first of a series of global expansion efforts to be announced in the months ahead."

Zscaler also named Jorge Padres to head Latin America operations. Padres has worked with companies that include San Jose-based Cisco Systems Inc 100% approval faxless payday loans. (NASDAQ:CSCO).

"Jorge has a proven track record of building successful operations in Latin America," said Jay Chaudhry, Zscaler CEO. "His experience and knowledge of the local marketplace, coupled with Zscaler's true SaaS service within local data centers will accelerate business in this important and fast growing market."

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European Central Bank Executive Board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi said the bank can intervene in the currency market if needed.

“Exchange-rate markets are prone to episodes of overshooting and undershooting,” Bini Smaghi said in a speech in Brussels today. “Public intervention — in the form of public statements or even outright interventions in FX markets - - may thus be warranted.”

Euro-area policy makers have expressed concern that the pound’s 13 percent slide against the euro in the past year could push the 16-nation bloc deeper into recession by undermining exports to its biggest trading partner. The region is already grappling with the worst recession since World War II as a collapse in global demand chokes foreign sales, prompting companies to scale back output and cut jobs.

The euro declined almost half a cent to $1.3506 and also weakened against the pound after Bini Smaghi’s comments were published.

While Bini Smaghi cited the International Monetary Fund’s view that the euro is “on the strong side of medium-term fundamentals,” he didn’t indicate the ECB is planning to intervene. Bini Smaghi said it may be detrimental for a country to devalue its currency to make exports cheaper.

‘Fuel Resentment’

“Using the exchange rate as an instrument to gain a competitive advantage over others may fuel resentment and stoke protectionist pressures,” he said. The question also arises whether the single market created by Europe’s monetary union “can function smoothly when the exchange rate is allowed — or even encouraged — to depreciate sharply health insurance quote.”

The Swiss National Bank began buying foreign currencies on March 12, helping to push the franc down against the euro. Before the move, the franc had appreciated 8 percent in six months, neutralizing interest-rate cuts and weighing on exports. Since the SNB’s announcement, the franc has lost about 3 percent against the euro.

The euro’s relative strength against the dollar and the pound is partly due to the ECB’s reluctance to lower interest rates as aggressively as the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England.

The ECB has cut its benchmark lending rate by 3 percentage points to the 1.25 percent since last October. By contrast, the Fed, Bank of England and Bank of Japan have cut their key rates to almost zero and have started buying corporate and government debt.

“If market perceptions of the inadequacy of the euro area’s response to the crisis grow and the euro loses out to competitive devaluations elsewhere, pushing it higher, the zone’s ability to take advantage of a tentative global recovery will be impeded,” Deutsche Bank AG economist Mark Wall wrote in a report published on April 3. Deutsche Bank said a sustained 5 percent gain in the euro reduces gross domestic product by 0.5 percent to 0.9 percent a year.

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KV Pharmaceutical Co. notified state regulators it was laying off nine employees in Largo and five employees in Plantation.

The layoffs took place on March 6, according to a notice posted Thursday by the Agency for Workforce Innovation.

The St. Louis-based pharmaceutical company is reducing its work force by about 1,700 employees nationwide.

KV (NYSE: KVa/KVb) last month entered a consent decree with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration regarding its drug manufacturing and distribution. As part of that decree, KV agreed not to market products it manufactures, until it has satisfied requirements designed to demonstrate compliance with the FDA’s good manufacturing practices regulations, a release from the company said.

KV does not have manufacturing facilities in Florida, but laid off workers across the country as a result of the consent decree, said Michael Anderson, a spokesman for the firm car insurance quotes. He declined further comment. The workers are sales employees whose primary duties involve work outside of KV Pharmaceutical’s regular employment sites, the company said in a letter to the state agency.

KV is a specialty pharmaceutical company that develops, manufactures, markets and acquires branded and generic prescription products. It markets its branded products through its Ther-Rx Corp. subsidiary and its generic products through its ETHEX Corp. subsidiary.

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The officials charged with overseeing the $700 billion financial bailout told lawmakers Tuesday that the Treasury Department must do more to ensure that taxpayer dollars are properly spent and that the public is kept in the loop.

The officials were particularly angered about a lack of accounting for the sprawling program, complaining that Treasury didn’t make any effort to monitor money that went to the 364 banks its has invested in, despite requests for information by oversight panels.

"Either you get Treasury to get some religion on this point and get some standards … or Congress [will be] forced to step in," said Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren, chairman of the Congressional Oversight Panel, at a Senate Banking Committee hearing.

The office of Inspector General for the TARP program, one of the oversight groups, did its own survey of banks that received money, and every bank that got money responded.

Neil Barofsky, special inspector general, said that some banks "co-mingled" their bailout money and couldn’t break out exactly what it was used for. But other banks kept their TARP money separate and could point to new loans that had been issued due to government help.

"Some banks described some lending programs that couldn’t be done without TARP funding," Barofsky said.

To better understand where taxpayer money is going, and if it is being used for lending, Barofsky said Treasury must account for its investments.

"I believe this makes an even stronger case for a recommendation we made back in December and which up until now has not been adopted — Treasury should require TARP recipients to monitor their use of funds and be required to provided certified reports to Treasury on how they are using taxpayer money," Barofsky said.

Program difficult to assess

Treasury’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program has become quite complex in recent months. It has been used for a variety of purposes, including the allocation of billions of dollars in funding for separate bailout efforts by the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The funding has been committed to a number of different projects, from bailing out automakers to modifying home mortgages, as well as helping banks.

Both Barofsky and Gene Dodaro, acting comptroller general of the U business