In Greece, meanwhile, 7,000 plainclothes police officers will be on duty when German Chancellor Angela Merkel visits Athens.

The Securities and Exchange Commission turned to a high-frequency trading firm to help build a system that will help the bank monitor high-frequency trading.

The market for municipal bonds is stuck in the dark ages, writes The Times' Gretchen Morgenstern.

Yoga-practicing, Bruce Springstein lover Barry Rosenstein, the founder of Jana Partners, is the activist investor you can bring home to mama in this profile.

Lehman Brothers' defunct brokerage is getting closer to paying creditors, four years after the firm went under.

Wall Street is anticipating lower corporate profits when companies begin reporting third quarter earnings, but that's not necessarily going to slow the stock market.

HSBC received a court order to bar Occupy protestors from entering its Hong Kong headquarters. The company evicted demonstrators in September after an 11-month occupation.

If only T. Boone Pickens had died ... Bloomberg Businessweek looks at Oklahoma State University's scheme to fund its athletic department by investing in life insurance policies on the program's boosters.

Would you work for Dominique Strauss-Kahn? Female executives are split on the question, according to Bloomberg.

A caddy at East Hamptons Golf Club, where memberships start at $400,000 and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein is a member, has self-published a book about looping for the rich.

Goodbye Smith Barney: Morgan Stanley is rolling out a name-change for the 75-year-old brand, according to The New York Post. The brokerage, jointly-owned with Citigroup, will be called Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. In its heyday, Smith Barney was known for its advertising slogan: “They make money the old fashioned way: They earn it.”Regarding name-changes, your favorite Charlotte-based lender spend some time pondering whether Bank of America Merrill Lynch was too much of a mouthful for its investment bank.

Rajiv Goel, the former Intel employee whose testimony helped convict Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam of insider trading last year, was sentenced to two years probation and force to disgorge more than $260,000 for his participation in Mr. Rajaratnam's scheme.

Lawyers for Peregrine Financial Group founder Russell Wasendorf Sr., who pleaded guilty to stealing millions from customers of his futures brokerage, want their client released on bail pending sentencing.

The International Monetary Fund wants more austerity measures from Greece. Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras is twisting arms.

A new book on Angela Merkel draws parallels between the German leader and Don Corleone.

DoubleLine Capital CEO Jeffrey Gundlach is offering $1 million for the safe return of a painting by Piet Mondrian that was stolen from his Santa Monica, Calif. home last month, and another $500,000 for the return of works by Jasper Johns and Joseph Cornell.

A hedge fund makes it (a little bit) easier for investors to pull money out.

Citigroup agreed to pay $590 million to settle a class-action lawsuit with shareholders who said the bank misled them regarding its exposure to subprime mortgage debt. The plaintiffs said Citi used improper accounting practices to conceal the size of its faltering portfolio in credit default swaps. In a statement, Citi denied the allegations and insisted, of course, that it is "fundamentally a different company today than at the beginning of the financial crisis."

Louis Freeh, trustee for MF Global's holding company, called for a global settlement that would end his feud with James Giddens, the trustee for MF Global's brokerage company, according to The New York Times.

Chinese banks appear to be among the coterie of global lenders to have flouted U.S. sanctions against Iran, The New York Times reports.

Shares in Yelp jumped yesterday in what The Wall Street Journal is confident in labeling a short squeeze.

The Journal sees Wall Street regulators throwing "sharp elbows" at each other in the competition for big cases and big headlines.

Latvia is a "Swiss-style" banking center for ex-Soviet cash, according to Bloomberg.

France's prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault says the 75 percent tax against high wage earners would be part of a collective national recovery effort. Business leaders said...the tax would hurt business.

German chancellor Angela Merkel said that Europe had an "absolute political will" to stabilize the euro. Italy's successful bond offering today indicates that investors believe the European Central Bank will intervene in sovereign debt markets.

“If you can keep the evening stuff to a dull roar that would great! There are just so many events,” gripped Bergdorf Goodman’s Linda Fargo to a publicist at Naeem Khan’s Valentine’s Day show. [sigh] The fashion week life!

We’re content to note that she had little reason to complain after Mr. Khan presented his excellent collection of glitzy daywear and dramatic metallic gowns. “That’s perfect for Lady Obama!” pointed a transfixed assistant editor. The Observer agrees…

Ms. Obama first wore a stunning Naeem Khan gown to a state dinner for the prime minister of India, back in 2009. She went returned to the designer in 2011, to wear one of his frocks to make nice with German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. Here are five outfits we want to dress Michelle Obama in, along with the matching occasion!

The day after his Cairo speech, President Obama visited the site of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and anti-war activist Elie Wiesel. Wiesel spoke movingly of his father’s death in the camp and President Obama’s brief remarks also resonated with deep emotion.  "I will not forget what I've seen here today," Obama said after touring the camp. "These sites have not lost their horror with the passage of time …This place teaches us that we must be ever vigilant about the spread of evil in our times.”  It was a remarkable event, with words and images that were truly memorable.

It is early in the game, and the endless global news cycle and complex interconnected economy makes it tough to even know what it means to be a leader and change agent in these difficult times. In this wacky world, the President and First Lady can’t even take in dinner and a Broadway show without someone finding fault with them. Still, I see the seeds of greatness in the first half year of this Presidency.  The potential is all there: The obvious brainpower and ambitious street smarts; the heart, soul and commitment of a man who knows who he is and is comfortable with his place in the world.  It’s too early to know how this story will evolve, but the President and his new team have only made a few obvious mistakes so far.

The contemporary tendency to constantly sit in judgment of every small thing our leaders do is more than a little weird. The intense scrutiny of constant cable news coupled with the Blogosphere, creates an endless demand for news and analysis. This is happening at the very time when the business model that supported large news staffs in great metropolitan newspapers and TV networks is in a state of free fall. Our thirst for facts and analysis is growing at the same time our capacity for supporting a profession responsible for gathering and assessing facts is shrinking. In the case of President Obama, I think it is worthwhile to sit back and reflect on both the accomplishments and the potential of his young Presidency.

First and foremost, we see a guiding intelligence and an effort at dispassionate judgment that I didn’t think we’d ever see again in the White House. The process that produces the modern President is so grueling and circus-like that it seems to attract people who need the Presidency more than we need them to be President.  Why would a smart, normal,  balanced person be attracted to a crazy process that if you succeed only makes you a prisoner of a security bubble for four or eight years? At times, it seems like a small miracle to see a talent like Barack Obama behind that Presidential podium. 

It’s also a talent that may have arrived in the nick of time. The strains on the planet and the world’s economy as well as the danger posed by terror and weapons of mass destruction require greatness in our leaders.  So far, we’ve seen movement at home with economic and energy policy, and efforts abroad, to redefine American diplomacy and reinforce our national security. A lot has happened in a short period of time- but a lot more still needs to be done.

“I make, obviously, no personal comment at all on the records of President Chirac or Gerhard Schroeder in Germany,” said Mr. Mandelson, a former British cabinet minister whose ruthless fealty to Tony Blair was among the attributes that earned him the nickname “The Prince of Darkness.”

“But to say that they had a strong vision of Europe—that is, a strong sense of European destiny and progress – I think would be a slight exaggeration,” he explained. “And I think to describe Mr. Chirac—and in his late years of office, Mr. Schroeder – as strong Atlanticists would also be erring on the side of the generous.”

Mr. Mandelson’s comments elicited some snickers from the audience on Park Avenue. But they were merely an entertaining detour en route to his larger point, which was that transatlantic relations were—at least in his view—improving.

He divined “an important opportunity for us” in the elections of Nicolas Sarkozy in France and Angela Merkel in Germany. “Why? Because both of them are self-confessed Atlanticists,” he said.

Mr. Mandelson needed little encouragement to focus closer to home during a brief interview with the Observer immediately after the event.

He asserted that the arrival of British prime minister Gordon Brown would only solidify the closeness that existed between the UK and the U.S. during Tony Blair’s premiership.

“I don’t think you’ll see a shift, I think you’ll see continuity,” he said. “Gordon Brown views the United States as Britain’s most important bilateral relationship, exactly in the way that Tony Blair did.”

Mr. Mandelson also poured cold water on the suggestion that domestic pressure upon Mr. Brown to create a greater sense of separation between Britain and the U.S. could prove too intense to resist.

“No, I don’t [agree],” he said. “Look, I’m not going to disguise from you that there are many in Britain—mainly but not only on the Left of the political spectrum—who dislike Mr. Bush’s policies, who would like to see Britain distancing itself more from the administration. But if you’re asking me whether that’s going to lead to some major departure or rupture, then I most certainly don’t [think so], no.”

Turning his attention once again toward the current leaders in France and Germany, Mr. Mandelson claimed that their presence had already lent an “improved tone” to transatlantic relations.

The former British cabinet minister is far from alone in perceiving a new dawn to be creeping over the horizon.

“In many ways, the galaxy of international leaders has never been better for the United States,” Erik Goldstein of Boston University’s International Relations Department told the Los Angeles Times earlier this year.

The ascensions of Ms. Merkel and, particularly, Mr. Sarkozy have been heralded by American conservatives, who see their victories as evidence that anti-Americanism is neither as widespread nor as trenchant among Europeans as some have suggested. After all, they argue, didn’t Mr. Sarkozy’s detractors label him ‘Sarko the American’, and did he not win over French voters regardless?

Mr. Sarkozy’s victory, Fred Thompson said in an ABC radio commentary, “has been a serious blow to those who claim that America has earned the undying hatred of Europeans… A French president who openly admires America is an embarrassment to those who view us as the country bumpkin cousins of the sophisticated Europeans.”

The New York Sun put things even more colorfully in an editorial:

“How are all those Democratic Party, pinky-in-the-air U.N. admirers who wailed about Mr. Bush’s alienating of Europe going to explain this turn of events?” it gloated.

It is not quite as simple as that. For a start, it takes a robust sense of self-importance to assume that national elections on the other side of the Atlantic are nothing more than referenda on relations with America.

In fact, the French and German elections were largely decided by domestic issues. In both cases, a moribund economy and a general sense of dissatisfaction with the status quo fuelled the victories of candidates whose pro-free market reform credentials were more important than their pro-Americanism.

A survey released in September by Italy’s Center for the Study of Political Change made even more bracing reading for those who claimed to feel a new warm breeze of amity wafting across the ocean. It found European populations at large much more hostile to the U.S. than were political elites.

Seventy-seven per cent of EU officials and 74 per cent of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) answered ‘yes’ when asked whether it was desirable that the U.S. exert strong leadership in world affairs. But the survey indicated that only 36 per cent of the EU public agreed.

Similarly, while majorities of both EU officials and MEPs expressed confidence that transatlantic relations would improve after the 2008 U.S. presidential election, only 38 per cent of the general public agreed.

Perhaps such statistics overestimate the long-term damage done to America’s international reputation. After all, if the solidarity expressed with the U.S. in the days after September 11 2001 can so quickly turn to hostility, it seems reasonable to assume things could flip in the opposite direction just as speedily.

Mr. Mandelson is among those who believe gloomy conclusions can be too hastily drawn from statistics like those in the Italian survey.

“There is a bond, an interdependence, which people recognize and which goes far deeper than people’s views of any particular administration, policy or action,” he said.

Time may prove that to be true. But rumors of a return to trans-Atlantic harmony are premature for the moment.

At the very least, the cleft between Europeans and Americans seems deeper and more bitter than the cheerleaders of U.S. conservatism – or the elites of European politics—would like to believe.

Haniya: In addition to being prime minister, I am also the Minister of Youth and Sports. I used to play football myself. What do I have to do to receive an invitation from (German) Chancellor Angela Merkel to attend the World Cup games?

SPIEGEL: For that to happen, you would also have to recognize Israel's right to exist and renounce violence.

Haniya: Then I'd rather watch the World Cup on television.