OBAMA TO SET OUT EURO CONCERNS - The euro was slightly higher in today's early trade, steadying after a slide caused by the Eurogroup chairman Jean-Claude Juncker said the common currency was overvalued.
Meanwhile later today the German Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet US President Barack Obama in Washington, where he is expected to highlight the damaging effects of foreign crises on the American economy. The euro zone debt problem is one of those crises mentioned by Obama in a radio address at the weekend.
Justin Urquhart-Stewart of Seven Investment Managers in London, who has written a comparison of the euro zone and US, says some of the US states' finances are in a parlous state, and the US has a huge budget deficit.
He says the US has, however, a unified tax and banking system means these problems can be 'covered up' to some extent.
The analyst says the debt crisis masks the success of the euro zone as an economic area - and that the core euro area has been more successful than the US in many ways.
Asked about the relative stability of stock markets in the light of the year's geo-political turmoil and natural disasters, but Mr Urquhart-Stewart says the test will come later this year, when investors ask where growth is going to come from.
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NEWS AND CURRENCIES - The computer company, Dell, is expected to announce around 150 new jobs for the Mid-West and Dublin later this morning.
The jobs are in cloud computing, or remote storage, which means data and software are stored on servers, and devices like smartphones or computers access them through the internet.
The euro is trading at $1.4606 and 89.32p sterling.
