Has it really been ten years since the Euro was introduced?

When the euro was introduced just after midnight on Jan. 1, 2002, celebratory fireworks exploded above the European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt. The historic bridge the Pont Neuf in Paris was lit up in European Union blue with 12 rays of light to symbolize the 12 nations circulating the euro — as people in those countries lined up at A.T.M.’s to get their hands on new bills that would be daily reminders of the project of European integration and unity.

Ten years later, the word “euro” in a headline is usually paired with the word “crisis.” Instead of hosting celebrations for the 10-year anniversary, policy makers appear to be staying as quiet as possible, as if hoping not to upset the brief calm that has come with the holiday season after European central bankers injected nearly $640 billion into the European banking system in December.

Will Europe get its act together? The recent events in Italy have to be encouraging. Let’s see if the austerity can be sustained.

The Chamber of Commerce supported Republicans in 2010 with a ton of financial support, assuming that the GOP would be pro-business. Instead, the House Republicans and most Republican Senators are more than happy to hold the American economy hostage to their ideological demands.

The Chamber of Commerce sent a letter to Congress on Friday urging legislators to quickly raise the debt ceiling, while also warning of catastrophe should the government continue spending at its current rate.

The Chamber, which represents business interests, helped elect many of the Republican members of Congress who are now threatening to vote against raising the debt ceiling. Republicans are demanding major cuts to government spending and long-term programs in return for their support.

The Chamber understands the consequences of messing around with the full faith and credit of the United States, while the Tea Party crowd seems happy to let the whole system collapse just to make a point. Remember the TARP vote and how many Republicans were willing to let all the banks collapse? Nobody should be surprised.

Robert Samuelson is a grouch. Nobody would ever accuse him of looking at the sunny side of things, particularly when it comes to budgetary matters.

With that in mind, here’s his sober assessment of TARP.

It isn’t often that the government launches a major program that achieves its main goals at a tiny fraction of its estimated costs. That’s the story of TARP — the Troubled Assets Relief Program. Created in October 2008 at the height of the financial crisis, it helped stabilize the economy, used only $410 billion of its authorized $700 billion and will be repaid most of that. The Congressional Budget Office, which once projected TARP’s ultimate cost at $356 billion, now says $19 billion. This could go lower.

Almost everyone loves to hate TARP. It’s a favorite political sport of liberals, conservatives, Republicans, Democrats — and the public. A Bloomberg poll last October asked how TARP had affected the economy. The results: 43 percent said it weakened the economy; 21 percent said it made no difference; only 24 percent said it helped, with 12 percent unsure one way or another. Commentators in newspapers from The Wall Street Journal to The New York Times disparage TARP.

Wrong.

One lesson of the financial crisis is this: When the entire financial system succumbs to panic, only the government is powerful enough to prevent a complete collapse. Panics signify the triumph of fear. TARP was part of the process by which fear was overcome. It wasn’t the only part, but it was an essential part. Without TARP, we’d be worse off today. No one can say whether unemployment would be 11 percent or 14 percent; it certainly wouldn’t be 8.9 percent.

That benefited all Americans. TARP, says Douglas Elliott of the Brookings Institution, “is the best large federal program to be despised by the public.”

This demonstrates just how out of touch many Americans are these days. Sure, there’s plenty of justifiable anger. But this program served its purpose.

Now that Hosni Mubarak has stepped down as dictator President of Egypt, it will be fascinating from a business a criminal point of view to see what happens to the fortune he has amassed on the backs of his people.

But over the last 20 years, Mubarak, his family and his close circle of advisers have enriched themselves through partnerships in powerful Egyptian companies, profiting from their political power, according to numerous reports. The 82-year-old leader and his two sons also wield the levers of the government, including the military and the country’s preeminent political party, to reward friends and punish enemies.

Mubarak — who stepped down on Friday in the wake of massive protests that have gripped Cairo and Alexandria for weeks — and his family have a net worth of at least $5 billion, analysts tell The Huffington Post. Recent media reports pegging the family fortune at between $40 and $70 billion are considered to be exaggerated.

Much of their fortune has reportedly been invested in offshore bank accounts in Europe and in upscale real estate. On Friday, Switzerland froze accounts possibly belonging to Mubarak and his family, a spokesman told Reuters, under new laws governing ill-gotten gains. Last month, the Swiss froze the accounts of Mubarak’s ally, ousted Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, whose overthrow inspired the first protests in Cairo.

The family owns tons of real estate throughout Europe and the rest of the world, along with stakes in numerous companies.

If Switzerland starts getting tough with them, there will be pressure for the rest of the world to do so as well. This will likely get ugly . . .

Here’s an interesting twist in the new reality:

With rising fears of a prolonged recession and stomach-churning moves in the stock market, corporate bond markets have performed so well this year they look like they’re part of a parallel universe.

Banks are reluctant to lend, but large corporations with the weakest credit ratings have had little trouble finding investors happy to hand over their cash.

Companies sold $24.6 billion in junk bonds in August, the eighth-best month ever for sales, according to Thomson Reuters data. Among those feeding in the market: Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Rite Aid Corp. and acquisitive power giant NRG Energy Inc.

So how is it that companies with bad credit find it so easy to borrow in this economy?

“A lot of that has to do with living in a world where investments pay less than 1 percent,” said Diane Vazza, head of fixed income research at rating agency Standard & Poor’s.

More and more companies are refinancing their corporate debt, getting rid of high-interest bonds in favor of a lower interest rate. In many ways this trend is a positive as companies lower their debt costs, having the exact effect that the Fed intended.

Elizabeth Warren has been a hot topic on both Capital Hill and Wall Street, as many are waiting to see whether she will be appointed as the head of the new Consumer Protection Agency.

The New York Times has written an editorial supporting her nomination. Meanwhile, more Democratic Senators are lining up to support her. Meanwhile, Warren is reaching out to some Republicans and lobbyists.

Chris Dodd has expressed concern over whether she can be confirmed, but many liberals argue that a fight with Wall Street supporters would help the administration heading into the midterm elections and would help fire up the liberal base.

We think this is a no-brainer for Obama – appoint her already!

Here’s an excellent article on how the White House economic team is organized. When you read about the President’s economic advisers, this article can help you understand how they all work together. It can also help you understand how different personalities work together, from Christina Romer to Larry Summers to Tim Geithner.

Thanks to Ezra Klein for the link. Ezra also has a great post on how Larry Summers might now be the ideal candidate to run the National Economic Council, given the nature of his personality.

Wall Street went crazy over the past 15 years, and we had mega-banks gobbling up prominent investment houses, and then making risky trades on their own account with the stockholders, and then the U.S. taxpayers footing the bill.

Now things are changing, hopefully in a good way.

It’s been a miserable few years for investment banks. Between epochal meltdowns, shotgun marriages, a federal pay czar, congressional investigations, reform legislation, and SEC lawsuits, even the proudest firms have been flayed (often for good reason). One of the less publicized results of that tumult has been an exodus of talent. But many bankers aren’t fleeing Wall Street — they’re fleeing to the other side of the Street: small boutique firms that eschew the proprietary trading and lending to their clients that the giant banks emphasize. These younger firms hark back to a venerable model of financial firms, selling only advice.

The biggest and fastest-rising of these outfits is Evercore Partners (EVR), headed by Roger Altman, the ultraconnected former U.S. Treasury official, and Ralph Schlosstein, a superstar who joined the firm last year from BlackRock (BLK, Fortune 500). Evercore shuns risk — no trading for its own account, no lending — and prides itself on avoiding everything that brought the Citigroups (C, Fortune 500) and Goldman Sachses (GS, Fortune 500) to grief. Instead, Evercore’s main service is providing advice to CEOs on mergers and restructurings.

This is the way it should be.

Christina Romer is leaving the Obama administration.

Romer, who chairs the Council of Economic Advisers, announced Thursday night that she is returning to her previous job as economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

Her resignation follows that of budget director Peter Orszag.

In a statement, Romer called the her White House service the “honor of a lifetime.”

It will be interesting to see whether we’ll see any policy changes. Romer is an expert in the Great Depression and was instrumental in the stimulus package. In many ways she has served her purpose, and now the administration can shift to sustained growth as opposed to the crisis management of the past 18 months.

Where do things stand now with U.S. banks? It’s been quite a roller coaster ride for the past 3 years, and now we may be heading into a new phase with the passage of financial reform.

In many ways it’s too early to gauge how FinReg will impact the banks in the long run, let alone the U.S. economy and ordinary Americans. But it looks like the consumer protection agency may be a game-changer. Banks have relied on hidden fees for a long time to prop up their profits, so that easy money will likely be reduced in the future.

Meredith Whitney was on CNBC the other day, and she remains skeptical of bank profits with the passage of the new law, and the disturbing fact that the banks still need time to remove toxic assets from their books.