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What to watch fortoday

Merkel sounds a gloomy note. German Chancellor Angela Merkel will say in her annual new years address that the eurozone crisis is far from over and that the economic environment will be more difficult in 2013. She appeared to contradict her own finance minister, Wolfgang Schuble, who said a couple of days ago that the worst was over.

The US will go over the fiscal cliff. Maybe. US lawmakers came back to the capital for a rare Sunday session. As both Republicans and Democrats fanned out to the usual Sunday talk shows, they were at first optimistic that some kind of temporary agreement would be reached in Washington, in order to avoid an tax hikes on pretty much everyone in America and oddities like runaway prices for milk. By the afternoon, it appeared that talks had stalled. Then Senate majority leader Harry Reid admitted that Congress was real close to the point that negotiations over even a temporary solution would collapse, possibly because of a debate over changes to Social Security. Suddenly, the odds on Intrade of a fiscal cliff deal by the absolute deadline, Dec. 31, plunged to 2.2%. Yet Republican senator Lindsey Grahamsaid the critical 80 votes needed in the Senate were in fact available for some sort of deal, and pundits reminded us that, as always, any public statements about cliff negotiations are probably a lot of posturing. Will the US fruitlessly go over the fiscal cliff, plunging the country into a UK-style double dip recession?

Markets are going to freak out over the fiscal cliff. If it happens. US financial markets have demonstrated a willingness to send the price of futures down precipitously at even the whiff of a breakdown in the talks over resolving the fiscal cliff. President Barack Obama emphasized this point, noting that if lawmakers go home without a deal, markets will have an adverse reaction. If selloffs in US markets reverberate across the globe, that could prove to be an understatement: Quartzs Simone Foxman notes that US markets could end 2012 with the craziest trading day of the year.

Black Monday for the NFL. At least six National Football League teams in the US are expected to fire their head coaches or general managers today in an annual ritual following the end of the regular season.

UN ends peacekeeping in East Timor. The United Nations is counting the seven-year mission as a success after two relatively calm presidential elections and the retraining of the police force. Peacekeepers previously pulled out in 2005 after shepherding the country into independence, but returned the next year amid unrest.

While you were sleeping

Chinese manufacturing survey optimistic. The monthly HSBC Purchasing Managers Index rose to 51.5, itshighest level in a year and a halfand adding to signs of Chinese economic momentum. Survey data indicated the new orders were driven by domestic orders, likely tied to infrastructure development, rather than exports.

Zynga pared its offerings. The social gaming companyshut down, or stopped accepting new players for, 11 games including Mafia Wars 2 and PetVille, as part of cost-cutting efforts to focus on more successful games and new titles.

Japan seizes Chinese fishing vessel. Japans coastguard seized a vessel and its captain inside its 200-mile nautical exclusion zone, on suspicion of coral fishing. Its the latest event in a long-running stand-off over territorial waters between the two.

See the article here:
Quartz Daily Brief—Fiscal cliff, euro gloom, PetVille, girl gang leaders