Reuters – European shares closed lower on Tuesday in response to disappointing U.S. economic data, with banking and commodity stocks weighing the most on the main index.

”We have had a couple of macro figures which did not please the market. The U.S. labour costs and productivity figures are worrying … they simply mean that there are enormous constraints on the consumer who are supposed to bail us all out of this,” said Heino Ruland, strategist at Ruland Research.

”Industry is just slashing costs all over the place … it means final demand may not be strong enough,” he said.

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Tags: commodity stocks, constraints, economic data, european shares, labour costs, productivity figures, reuters, strategist

Wealth Bulletin – Regulators will this week agree broad principles for clamping down further on hedge fund managers, after the European Commission proposed more draconian constraints on their activities.

At the 34th annual meeting of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions, starting today and hosted by the Israel Securities Authority and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, the hedge fund industry will come under the regulatory scanner. Greg Tanzer, secretary-general of Iosco, said: “Rules on hedge funds and short-selling will be finalised in Tel Aviv.

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Tags: annual meeting, aviv stock, commissions, constraints, european commission, hedge funds, hedge-fund-managers, international organisation, iosco, israel, regulators, scanner, secretary general, tanzer, tel aviv stock exchange

guardian.co.uk – The Independent’s Jeremy Warner is not convinced and argues that the failure is entirely their own. In the Daily Telegraph, Richard Fletcher explains that though Horlick blames US regulators for their lack of oversight her clients should be asking her some tough questions. In The Times, Daniel Finkelstein says what you need to understand about Charles Ponzi’s scheme is that when he started it, it wasn’t a Ponzi scheme. It just got out of hand.

David Wighton says the sums involved are breathtaking. He suggests there must be a worry that other boom-time frauds will now be exposed by the bust. David Aaronovitch says by last week he was ready for Bernard Madoff. He had read JK Galbraith’s The Great Crash 1929 and taken his point that in boom times the rate of embezzlement grows because the promised rewards don’t seem as absurd as they actually are and the rate of discovery falls off. In the Daily Mail, Alex Brummer says that the £33bn fraud by Madoff could spell the end for the most controversial investment vehicles of recent years: hedge funds.

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Tags: commodity-pool-operators, constraints, distribution-partner, financial-regulator, house-of-representatives, new-evidence, russian-tycoon