Top 10 at 10: Euro banks shudder as Latvian crisis nears; (Chinese) boom boom boom boom; Fisk's golden scoop; Dilbert

Here are my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 10am. I welcome your additions and comments in the comments below or please send your suggestions for Wednesday's Top 10 to bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz We have no cats at interest.co.nz... 1. Brace for it - Sweden's banks are bracing for a Latvian disaster, Ambrose Evans Pritchard points out in The Telegraph. HT Greg Elliott The Svenska Dagbladet newspaper said Sweden's finance minister Anders Borg had told banks secretly that Latvia's political order was unravelling, advising them to prepare for the collapse of Latvia's rescue talks. Latvia has failed to deliver draconian spending cuts agreed to secure the next tranche of its €7.5bn (£6.85bn) bail-out from the EU, the International Monetary Fund, and Sweden, balking at 20pc cuts in pensions and a further 15pc cut in public wages. 2. Gold for oil? - Robert Fisk in The Independent appears to have a monster scoop on secret talks involving the Gulf Arabs, the Russians, the French, Japan and the Chinese over plans to create a new basket of currencies to trade oil, rather than the US dollar. The apparently could even use gold as an interim measure. This is explosive because, if it actually happens, this would be the first serious threat to the US dollar's status as the global reserve currency. That would strip the United States of its ability to print money with impunity to bail itself out of its debt-driven profligacy of the last decade. All hell would break loose. Not too surprisingly, the value of gold spiked around US$20/oz to US$1,040/oz and the US dollar fell, even though the various nations were quick to deny the report. We'll see. It's the sort of thing I'd do if I was in the Chinese or Russian shoes. HT Troy Barsten, Will de Cleene and Greg Elliott via email.

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning "“ along with China, Russia, Japan and France "“ to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar. Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars. The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years. The Americans, who are aware the meetings have taken place "“ although they have not discovered the details "“ are sure to fight this international cabal which will include hitherto loyal allies Japan and the Gulf Arabs. Against the background to these currency meetings, Sun Bigan, China's former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. "Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable," he told the Asia and Africa Review. "We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security."

Oh boy...if it's true. Robert Fisk has his own verb in the blogging world for being proved wrong: to be 'Fisked'. 3. 'Value for money'  - I don't often include links from the North Shore Times in Top 10 at 10. But this one couldn't be passed up. The North Shore City Council IT manager Tony Rogers is defending the council's decision to spend NZ$400,000 on a website upgrade for the council just months before a move to a Super City will make it redundant. My main complaint is the cost. That is an outrageous sum of money for a website upgrade. We are completely rebuilding our website right now much less than a quarter the cost of that upgrade. No wonder council spending is growing 10% a year and rates, fees and fines are rising 7.5-10% a year.

Mr Rogers says millions are spent by companies on similar website upgrades so $400,000 is value for money. The main problems with the old website were it had too many pages and it was difficult to navigate, he says. The council's services development manager Tehmus Mistry says early feedback on the new website has been positive. Among its features is the ability to upload photos of missing dogs and online polling on issues.

4. Still grumpy - Despite the recent rise in dairy commodity prices, European dairy farmers are still kicking up a stink about low milk prices and demanding EU subsidies ahead of a key EU meeting, the BBC reported. HT Lew Burton.

Amid a heavy police presence, farmers protested outside the main EU Council building where the meeting was being held. Many rang cow bells, while some poured milk onto the pavements or threw eggs. Others brought some of their dairy cows with them. Farmers say their current production costs are more than twice the price they get for their milk. They insist that the EU must tighten milk quotas to drive up prices, rather than sticking to the current commitment to end all quotas by 2015 and move price control wholly over to the market. France and Germany led calls at the meeting for the EU to give farmers emergency funds. Ahead of the official meeting, ministers from about 20 of the 27 EU member states issued a joint statement, demanding that the EU Commission come up with funds to relieve dairy farmers' immediate needs.Across its 27 member nations, the EU pays the agriculture sector 55bn euros ($80bn; £50bn) annually for support payments, storage aid, rural development, and other projects.

Grrrrrr 5. Boom, boom, boom, boom - We don't like it like that. This is the lyric to one of my favourite John Lee Hooker songs Check out the lame white kids' dancing) It's also what is happening to property prices in China after the Chinese banks lent madly through late 2008 and early 2009. Xinhua reports it's going nuts over there, with apartment prices up 37% and record volumes going through. HT Gertraud via email  BTW This is a better version with John Lee Hooker in a pale blue suit.

Price per square meter of the floor space of residential land sold in September hit new highs, reaching 2,691 yuan (394 U.S. dollars), a 37 percent month on month rise.  Beijing's land sales in May exceeded the total amount sold from January to April, China Daily reported On June 10. A credit crunch, dwindling house transactions and falling prices had hit hard some Chinese cities following the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis.  However, due to realtor's improved cash flow, loosened credit environment and lesser worries of inflation, China's property market started to rebound since this February.

6. Stinking fish - This is a bit off the track but an interesting piece nonetheless at The New Republic on the global crisis in fish stocks. It has a great headline. Acquacalypse Now. And yet the current government have just increased the hoki quota. Nuts. HT Troy Barsten.

Our oceans have been the victims of a giant Ponzi scheme, waged with Bernie Madoff"“like callousness by the world's fisheries. Beginning in the 1950s, as their operations became increasingly industrialized--with onboard refrigeration, acoustic fish-finders, and, later, GPS--they first depleted stocks of cod, hake, flounder, sole, and halibut in the Northern Hemisphere. As those stocks disappeared, the fleets moved southward, to the coasts of developing nations and, ultimately, all the way to the shores of Antarctica, searching for icefishes and rockcods, and, more recently, for small, shrimplike krill. As the bounty of coastal waters dropped, fisheries moved further offshore, to deeper waters. And, finally, as the larger fish began to disappear, boats began to catch fish that were smaller and uglier--fish never before considered fit for human consumption. Many were renamed so that they could be marketed: The suspicious slimehead became the delicious orange roughy, while the worrisome Patagonian toothfish became the wholesome Chilean seabass. Others, like the homely hoki, were cut up so they could be sold sight-unseen as fish sticks and filets in fast-food restaurants and the frozen-food aisle.

7. Slimband - Here is some interesting research on the issue of broadband which shows New Zealand was still among the basketcases with Poland, Malta, Estonia and Turkey in 2008. Page nine has the killer table. We have improved in 2009, but I'd argue we should be in the category "Ready for tomorrow", along with Latvia and Romania. HT Peter Salmon 8. Haircut - Felix Salmon at Reuters has pointed out an interesting idea from the FDIC's Sheila Bair (one of the few US regulators to emerge from the crisis with any credit) that lenders should be limited to getting only 80% of their money back from failed banks.

I like this idea, if only because secured funding at banks is invidious, especially from the point of view of someone like Bair, who exists to protect deposits. Depositors are senior to unsecured creditors, so lenders love to jump the queue, as it were, and become secured creditors instead, thereby becoming senior even to depositors. It's an easy way of being lazy, and not feeling the need to underwrite billions of dollars in loans.

9. Prick the bubble - Nouriel Roubini writes in the WSJ that the Federal Reserve should be targeting asset bubbles in the future and must avoid allowing banks to become Too Big to Fail.

If the conflict between economic growth and financial stability requires that monetary policy remain loose, then it is critical that the supervisors and regulators of the banking sector move aggressively to prevent another bubble from emerging. Thus they should quickly adopt the regulatory reforms agreed to by the G-20"”including a new insolvency regime for financial institutions deemed "too big to fail," a serious approach to limiting "systemic risk," and appropriate rules governing incentives and compensation for bankers and traders.

10. Really? - Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge is sceptical about the Fisk report on the conspiracy to bring down the US dollar.

Let's be serious. Russia was inches from begging the IMF for money last fall. The Yuan is not freely tradable and money supply in China is growing at twice the pace at which it is growing in the US, the UK, or Europe. The Chinese government actually believes the acronym GDP stands for printing money to buy commodities. The Euro has shown how using a single currency for a set of different economies is extremely difficult to manage. Spain and Ireland used the euro to fuel (or extend) bubbles before completely collapsing in near-depression. Setting appropriate rates is very difficult and there is little doubt that if more Eastern European countries get integrated the problem will be magnified, as these countries will jump on the opportunity to become centers of production, and this time they will be protected under the same exchange rate regime as the rest of the EU, unlike last fall where many of them almost went bankrupt. Then comes the Yen, it has been used as part of jokes involving gazillions in several Hollywood comedies over the past 20 years but other than that it has mainly fueled every carry trade before the USD joined it. Honestly people need to think really hard before they start discussing a new world reserve currency or other options of the sort to replace the USD. Every currency needs to be associated with an interest rate regime, which takes you back to the problem discussed before regarding the Euro. All you will achieve with a unique currency is kill any cost of production differences across the countries adopting the new currency, and align everybody on a single living standard benchmark.