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The country of 4.7 million people climbed seven spots to 102nd in the World Bank’s annual “Doing Business” report this year, lagging behind China, Vietnam and Namibia. Moody’s Investors Service lowered its outlook on Costa Rica to negative from neutral in September, citing a rising debt burden and widening budget deficit. Moody’s rates the country Baa3, putting it in the same category as Turkey and Iceland.

In a Bloomberg survey published last month, Costa Rica was ranked fourth behind Russia, Argentina and Ukraine on a list of countries confronting the biggest loss of investor confidence. The survey cited data including the rising cost of credit default swaps and the currency’s performance against the dollar.

California-based Intel, whose processors run more than 80 percent of personal computers shipped worldwide every year, originally chose to establish operations in Costa Rica after studying sites in Indonesia, Thailand, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Mexico, according to a 2000 case study by Harvard University’s Center for International Development. The company’s $600 million investment at the time represented about 4.2 percent of GDP, prompting the company’s then-Vice President Bob Perlman to say Intel’s arrival was like “putting a whale in a swimming pool,” according to the study.

n 2013, about 21 percent of Costa Rica’s exports of goods came from Intel, according to investment promotion agency CINDE

While a slide in imports accounts for some of the correction, Greece boosted its exports outside the EU by about 30 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 from the previous year, while Italy’s rose 13 percent in January from a year ago, he said.

The metamorphosis is known as internal devaluation

Prevented by membership of the euro from driving down currencies, governments and companies are squeezing labor costs to spur productivity.

On average, the periphery is about halfway to eliminating large structural current-account deficits, which allow for declines related to recession-driven weaker import demand, estimates Goldman Sachs (GS).

The OECD today published an index showing that relative labor costs in Spain and Portugal have now dropped below Germany’s for the first time since 2005.

“It’s potentially good for the economy but only if it results in faster investment,”

“If not then there’s a downward spiral risk.”

Maybe Draghi’s policies can buy time for deeper “structural changes” in the periphery, although quite what those are and what difference they would make in the near term remains elusive

More likely, a shift in ECB policies would make the European situation uglier. For one, Draghi would essentially be conceding fiscal dominance, demonstrating that if governments run budget deficits, they can count on the central bank to finance them.

Perhaps Draghi is planning the same game with fiscal authorities that the Banca d’Italia used to play with Italian politicians in the 1980s and early 1990s -- keep interest rates low enough to prevent fiscal collapse, yet high enough to keep fiscal prudence as a priority. Make no mistake about it, inflation or not, this is a strategy of high real interest rates.

Banks used the cash to buy sovereign debt

Noonan then ramped up his efforts to broker a deal on banking debt. He had a consistent line: it was payback time. The government hadn’t imposed losses on senior bank bondholders, preventing contagion spreading across the euro region from the Irish banking crisis.

The economy emerged from recession in the second quarter, unemployment dropped for six months in a row, and house prices in Dublin are rising again. The yield on 10-year bonds is down to 3.5 percent, lower than Italy and Spain.

“The Germans disagree all the time until the very end, and then they agree,” he said. “Once you realize that, you keep talking, you keep chipping away.”

Bank of France Governor Christian Noyer told journalists in Paris last week that “whatever happens in Greece” won’t place any French financial institution in difficulty.

What’s changed is that banks in the so-called core EU countries of Germany, France and the U.K. used funds from the ECB in December and February to insulate their southern European units against losses should one or more country exit the euro. “If you’re a U.K. lender and you’ve lent 10 billion euros to your Spanish subsidiary and Spain exits, you’re suddenly only going to get paid back in 50 percent devalued pesetas and you’re on the hook for 5 billion euros,” said Philippe Bodereau, London-based head of European credit research at Pacific Investment Management Co., the world’s largest bond investor.

One way multinational banking groups are mitigating that risk is by replacing their own funding lines to subsidiaries in the region with ECB loans. Deutsche Bank, Europe’s biggest bank by assets, tapped “a small amount” of ECB cash to help fund corporate and retail business in continental Europe, where it has sizeable operations in Italy and Spain. BNP Paribas, Europe’s third-biggest bank, used the programs to help fund its Italian unit as it reduces intergroup backing.

European banks also have cut their sovereign-debt holdings and exposures to Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal.

ermany, France and the U.K. reduced exposure to Greece by more than half in the two years through the end of 2011 to $68.2 billion, BIS data show.

The Arctic Council's 2009 report estimated that the NSR offers from a 35 percent to 60 percent savings in distance for ships traveling between Europe and the Far East. Ships also can circumvent regional conflicts and the risk of piracy near the coast of Africa or in the Straits of Malacca off Malaysia.

Hiring charges for mandatory escort by Rosatomflot's icebreakers vary, but the average cost is about $200,000,

the cost of escort through the NSR is roughly equivalent to that of passage through the Suez Canal.

Because "container" shipping of goods, (as opposed to bulk shipping of raw commodities like ores and fuel), relies heavily on on-time delivery, Carmel thinks it unlikely the NSR ever will become a major pathway for this kind of global commerce.

primary focus on the 22 percent of the world's remaining undiscovered oil and natural gas resources to be found in the far north.

Just last month, Novatek signed a deal to supply China National Petroleum Corporation for 15 years with fuel sent from Yamal by tanker