The world could face high inflation and a “crisis after the crisis” when the global economy recovers, Peer Steinbrück, German finance minister, has warned, the Financial Times reported. The comments, in a weekend interview, are the latest sign of concern from Germany at the extra-loose monetary policies conducted by central banks around the world and the ever-larger fiscal stimuli being unveiled by governments.

Russian banks’ bad loans will quadruple to $70 billion this year, deepening the country’s worst financial crisis since the government’s 1998 debt default, a Bloomberg survey shows. Non-performing loans will increase to 12.8 percent of the 18.4 trillion rubles ($549 billion) owed by Russian companies and individuals by the end of this year, from 3.2 percent in March, according to the mean estimate of 17 banking analysts polled by Bloomberg in the past week. HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe’s biggest bank, expects delinquencies to reach 23 percent, Europe’s highest rate after Hungary at 25 percent.

Ireland will take commercial-property assets off the books of six of its biggest lenders and house them in a new state agency, a plan it hopes will restore international confidence in the nation's financial system, The Wall Street Journal reported. If necessary, the state will take majority stakes in Ireland's two main banks. Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said Wednesday that all land and development loans of Ireland's major banks will be housed in the new National Asset Management Agency.

The Dutch government may have offered too much help to an arm of Fortis NV when it nationalized the financial-services company last year, the European Union's competition regulator said, announcing that it was opening a formal investigation into the bailout, The Wall Street Journal reported. EU rules meant to ensure that foreign companies can compete with domestic ones in the common market restrict how governments can provide aid to businesses.

The Russian factory known as Avtovaz is one of the least efficient automobile factories anywhere in the world--each worker produces, on average, eight cars a year, compared with 36 cars a year at General Motors’ assembly line in Bowling Green, Ky., for example. Yet the government is giving Avtovaz billions of dollars in aid, no strings attached, The New York Times reported. “The key issue is too much government protection,” Yegor T. Gaidar, a former prime minister, said.

Ireland’s government, reeling from the loss of its top credit rating by Standard & Poor’s, may increase taxes and cut spending in an emergency budget today aimed at stemming the biggest deficit among euro-area nations, Bloomberg reported. Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, who is making his second budget speech in six months, says the country faces a “very grave national crisis” as the deficit heads for 13 percent of gross domestic product, four times the European Union limit. He may also announce plans to remove toxic property loans from the nation’s biggest banks.

Fourteen global corporate bond issuers defaulted last week, the largest weekly tally so far this year, Standard and Poor's said in a report. This raised the total of corporate issuers that have defaulted in 2009 to 68, more than triple the 19 defaults seen at the same time last year, the report said. "By region, the U.S. continued its dominance in default count, adding nine issuers this (last) week to its roster of 45 issuers so far this year," said Diane Vazza, managing director of research for S&P. Europe followed, adding three defaults to its tally of six defaulted issuers for 2009.

The trustee liquidating Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC said he needs to hire attorneys in Luxembourg to help recover customer assets in that country, Bloomberg reported. Irving Picard, the lawyer appointed by the Securities Investor Protection Corp. to unwind the now-defunct firm of convicted fraud mastermind Bernard Madoff, is responsible for conducting a broad investigation of Madoff’s assets and actions. Picard has said he’s already recovered about $1 billion to repay Madoff clients. In court papers filed yesterday in U.S.

Polish corporate bankruptcies rose by 25 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2009 to 126, a sharp reversal in a positive downward trend observed from 2002, Coface Poland said in a report on Monday. In 2008 the number of bankruptcies declined by 7 percent year-on-year, said the report, quoted by Polish news agency PAP. "In 2009 bankruptcy statistics, firms are appearing whose bankruptcy was directly influenced by crisis-related factors," the report said, identifying a dramatic decline in the number of orders as a primary bankruptcy factor.

Europe’s recession deepened more than estimated in the fourth quarter after companies scaled back production and consumer spending declined. Gross domestic product in the euro region declined 1.6 percent from the previous three months, the most in at least 13 years, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said today, revising down a March 5 estimate of a 1.5 percent contraction. Investment plunged 4 percent and household spending fell 0.3 percent. From a year earlier, GDP shrank 1.5 percent, the only full-year drop on record.