German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble attends the G20 finance ministers meeting during the Spring Meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, April 19, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Yuri Gripas

BERLIN | Sun May 12, 2013 2:21am EDT

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's finance minister has signaled his opposition to any move by the European Central Bank to buy asset-backed securities to help indebted states, telling his party it would amount to "covert state financing", according to German magazine Spiegel.

Spiegel said in its edition published on Sunday that Wolfgang Schaeuble made the comment during a meeting of his Christian Democrat (CDU) party last Wednesday, telling those present the purchase of asset-backed securities (ABS) by the European Central Bank (ECB) would infringe European rules.

German newspaper Die Welt, citing a central bank source, said last Wednesday a majority of ECB Governing Council members seemed to be in favor of the central bank buying ABS.

ECB policymaker Yves Mersch said on the same day, however, the ECB would not subsidize markets with asset purchases.

A spokesman for the German finance ministry said it never commented on internal party discussions.

At the start of May, the ECB said it had set up a task force with the European Investment Bank (EIB) to assess ways to unblock lending to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), for example by promoting a market for ABS based on SME loans.

ABS would allow banks to pass some credit risk on to other investors, enabling them to lend more and so potentially boost growth.

The move to promote ABS is controversial, particularly in Germany, as during the financial crisis such securities became toxic due to the default of housing loans that underpinned them.

(Reporting by Alexandra Hudson; Editing by Mark Potter)

View the original article here

Britain's Education Secretary, Michael Gove, leaves Downing Street in London December 19, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Neil Hall

LONDON | Fri May 10, 2013 8:16am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - British Education Minister Michael Gove criticized the use of the popular "Mr Men" cartoon figures to teach 16-year olds about Adolf Hitler, saying such play-based learning infantilized students and led to a culture of low aspirations.

In a speech delivered on Thursday, Gove lashed out against an online resource for history teachers that promotes using the "Mr Men" figures for revision on Nazi Germany.

British media reports on Gove's speech were accompanied by a picture of Mr Fussy, a figure with a Hitler-style moustache and hair-do, one of a panoply of characters such as Mr Happy and Mr Cool created by author Roger Hargreaves.

"I may be unfamiliar with all of Roger Hargreaves's work but I am not sure he ever got round to producing Mr Anti-Semitic Dictator, Mr Junker General or Mr Dutch Communist Scapegoat," Gove told an education conference in Brighton.

"What makes the setting of higher expectations more difficult is the culture of excuses and low aspirations which some in the education establishment still defend," Gove added.

The website ActiveHistory, which offers the Mr Men lesson plan, stresses that the Mr Men exercise is a revision tool, and students should have finished studying the rise of Hitler before embarking on the cartoon exercise.

Gove came under pressure about his own plans to revise the history curriculum earlier this year when historians criticized him in an open letter, saying the scope of his proposed teaching program was too narrowly focused on Britain.

(Reporting By Shadia Nasralla, editing by Mohammed Abbas and Paul Casciato)

View the original article here