Lloyd's plans for euro collapse; Let's be less productive; Inequality not the answer, it was our downfall; Rupee woes point to economic drift; Heartthrob Khan

1 Lloyds ‘has plans for euro collapse’ (BBC) Lloyd's of London is preparing contingency plans for the possibility of the euro collapsing, its chief executive has said. With Greece facing new elections in June and anti-bailout feelings high, there are fears Athens may be forced to exit the eurozone. Richard Ward said Lloyd's needs to "prepare for that eventuality". He said that Lloyd's would settle claims using multiple currencies. Mr Ward is one of the first bosses of a large UK business to admit he is planning for the end of the euro. Lloyd's of London is a market in which syndicates meet brokers and agree to take on particular risks.

2 Lessons from Facebook IPO (San Francisco Chronicle) On one hand, Facebook's IPO was a financial success. The company raised a war chest of $16 billion and minted a small army of millionaires and billionaires, capping off an improbable eight-year run that saw the social network grow to 900 million users. But Facebook allegedly played down the extent of its second-quarter business challenges in its prospectus, priced its offering higher than the market could bear, and drew scrutiny from a range of authorities. And Nasdaq, which waged a fierce war with the New York Stock Exchange over the right to list Facebook, embarrassed itself with glitches that delayed and prevented trading for hours.

"There are actually real businesses being created, and a lot of fundamental technology changes, so this hasn't dampened the enthusiasm at all," said Mark Siegel, managing director at venture capital firm Menlo Ventures. Yet he and others acknowledged that along with other recent weak tech IPOs, Facebook's offering revealed flaws inside the market machinery. And individual investors were certainly left wishing they had waited longer to buy.

3 Let’s be less productive (The New York Times) Has the pursuit of labour productivity reached its limit? Productivity is often viewed as the engine of progress in modern capitalist economies. Output is everything. Time is money. The quest for increased productivity haunts the waking hours of CEOs and finance ministers. Perhaps forgivably so: our ability to generate more output with fewer people has lifted our lives out of drudgery and delivered us a cornucopia of material wealth.

But the relentless drive for productivity may also have some natural limits. Ever-increasing productivity means that if our economies don’t continue to expand, we risk putting people out of work. Like it or not, we find ourselves hooked on growth. What, then, should happen when, for one reason or another, growth just isn’t to be had anymore? Increasing productivity threatens full employment. One solution would be to accept the productivity increases, shorten the workweek and share the available work.

But there’s another strategy for keeping people in work when demand stagnates. Perhaps in the long run it’s an easier and a more compelling solution: to loosen our grip on the relentless pursuit of productivity. At first, this may sound crazy, but there are sectors of the economy where chasing productivity growth doesn’t make sense at all. Certain kinds of tasks rely inherently on the allocation of people’s time and attention. The caring professions are a good example: medicine, social work, education. Expanding our economies in these directions has all sorts of advantages.

4 Inequality wasn’t the answer, it was our downfall (The Guardian) At last week's OECD forum in Paris much of the focus was on the drama being acted out in Brussels, as Europe's leaders met over dinner and failed, yet again, to resolve the debt crisis. In the summary of their discussions, OECD ministers promised to "tackle increasing inequalities through 'making work pay' approaches, support for low-income households, financial inclusion, as well as investment in people and jobs". There may be few concrete results, but it's now becoming increasingly fashionable to acknowledge that inequality is an economic problem in its own right, as well as a question of social justice.

For a long time, the growing gap between rich and poor caused hand-wringing among lefties, but was dismissed by many economists – and the political consensus – as an unfortunate but inevitable side-effect of the battle to subdue inflation, and, later, of technological change and globalisation. An excellent new paper by James Galbraith, the economist son of a famous economist father, presented in Paris but as yet unpublished, helps explain how we got here.

5 South Africa’s abandoned ‘dump’ people (Johannesburg Times) Thousands of destitute people - including hundreds of children - living on a Gauteng dump are being left by the provincial government to fend for themselves. This comes as the provincial department of local government and housing are refusing help to the residents on the landfill site, as the settlement is "not permanent", even though it has been there for 12 years. The residents are also faced with possible eviction, as the land on which the site is situated is owned by mining company Gold 1 and has been earmarked to be sold to the municipality.

Last week The Times exposed the appalling conditions under which the residents are living. An estimated 85% of the residents are HIV positive. People from across South Africa have been scrambling to provide aid. Until last week the 4,000 residents were surviving with one tap and five long-drop toilets.

6 Rupee’s woes point to economic drift (Khaleej Times) India’s rupee, which hit an unprecedented string of all-time lows last week, is set for more falls unless policymakers move quickly to put Asia’s third-largest economy back on track, analysts say. The rupee, which slumped to as low as 56.38 to the dollar last week, has lost around a quarter of its value in the past 12 months and is currently Asia’s worst-performing currency.

“The Indian rupee’s weakness is a symptom and not the underlying problem”, which is “policy incoherence, shifting global risk appetite and a comatose government”, said Rajiv Malik, senior economist at independent brokerage CLSA. Ratings agency Standard and Poor’s has cut India’s credit outlook to negative, growth is slowing and the current account deficit is at a three-decade high. “India’s weak national government remains the single biggest drag on activity,” said Glenn Levine, senior economist at Moody’s Analytics.

Many analysts are eyeing 60 rupees to the dollar as the next big mark for the currency as lacklustre US data and worsening European debt crisis prompt risk-averse investors to dump emerging-market assets. The government has forecast growth of 7.6% for this fiscal year to March 2013. But private forecasters are pencilling in numbers from six to seven percent — enviable by Western standards but not enough to reduce India’s crushing poverty, experts say.

7 Syria’s slaughter of lambs (Khaleej Times) Unlike the words in the song where one can cling to a tendril of hope, the gruesome killing sprees in the Syrian town of Houla belie that hope most absolutely. The wanton and cold blooded killing of over 90 innocents must prick the global conscience into wakefulness. It cannot keep seeking the refuge of words like atrocity and condemnation. This daily blood-drenched litany of deaths has blurred into a sort of dangerous acceptance and no longer freights the world with the level of responsibility demanded by the toll, not just of the hourly knell but also the count of the bodies. When women and children are the targets and the defenceless and the weak become martyrs without knowing why in a war which is not theirs, then the time has come for an awakening and it is up to the UN to initiate moves that immediately end the spill.

8 The heartthrob Khan (Rahul Singh in Khaleej Times) I was once taking an international flight out of Mumbai airport and was in the immigration queue. To my astonishment, just ahead of me was Aamir Khan, waiting his turn, like any other passenger. My admiration of the man went up. It has soared since his ongoing TV series made their debut, three weeks ago. “Satyamev Jayate”, is an inspired title for an inspiring programme. The first programme was on an extremely touchy and sensitive subject: female foeticide and the widespread illegal practice of determining the sex of an unborn child, using sonography devices. Whereas the male-female ratio in most societies is roughly equal, in India it is heavily skewed in favour of males. Why? Because boys are preferred to girls, partly due to the pernicious custom of dowry.

Aamir took this national scandal head-on, pointing out how venal gynaecologists and foolish parents were to blame. You would think that such a depressing subject could not possibly attract a large Indian audience. But you would be wrong. The first programme was a smash hit, with a viewership of an astounding 90 million, beating even Amitabh Bachchan’s “Kaun Banega Crorepati?” (Who wants to be a millionaire?) debut. The subsequent two episodes in the ‘Satyamev series, one on sexual abuse of children and the other on the high cost of marriages, have been just as riveting.

Aamir Khan has been awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third highest state honour, after the Bharat Ratna and the Padma Vibhushan. There has been a clamour that Sachin Tendulkar should get the Bharat Ratna. In my estimation, Aamir deserves it more.

9 Father of slain Tiananmen protestor kills himself (Dawn) The father of a man killed in the

1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown has hanged himself after two decades of failed attempts to seek government redress. A support group for parents of the crackdown’s victims said that 73-year-old Ya Weilin’s body was found in an unused underground parking garage below his residential complex. Zhang Xianling, a member of the group, says Ya killed himself out of despair and to protest the government’s long-standing refusal to address the grievances of the victims’ relatives. His death comes about a week ahead of the anniversary of the night of June 3-4, 1989 when the military crushed the weeks-long, student-led protests, possibly killing thousands of students, activists and ordinary citizens.

10 ‘Greece running out of cash by June’ (Straits Times) Former Greek prime minister Lucas Papademos warned Greece may run out of money by the end of June if international bailout funds are cut off following next month's election, a newspaper reported on Sunday. 'From late June onwards, the ability of the government to fund its obligations fully depends on the approval of the subsequent instalments of loans from the EFSF and the IMF,' To Vima newspaper quoted Mr Papademos as saying in a leaked memo. 'The available funds in the Greek government will be reduced gradually from about 3.8 billion euros on May 11 to about 700 million euros on June 18 and from June 20 will enter negative territory at the level of around one billion euros.'

11 India Maoists assembling rocket launches (The Times of India) Maoists are believed to be churning out low cost rocket launchers from makeshift workshops, with parts sourced from industrial tool manufacturing units in Kolkata and the National Investigation Agency reckons the ultras may have stockpiled 6,000 of these in the jungles of Chhattisgarh. The NIA believes the operation was being overseen by Sadanala Ramakrishna, who was recently arrested from Kolkata and was said to be slain Maoist leader Kishenji's successor. The agency, which is investigating Ramakrishna's case, found that the chief of CPI (Maoist) Technical Research and Arms Management Unit may have already managed to send over 6,000 rocket launchers to Chhattisgarh.

12 Water shortage looms for India farmlands (The Wall Street Journal) A water shortage is looming over many of India’s most productive farmlands, a development that may pose serious challenges to the country’s food security. We are talking about the farmlands that drove the country’s so-called Green Revolution in the mid-sixties, a program that made India largely self-sufficient when it came to food. India’s usable supply of water by 2030 could fall short of projected demand by as much as 50%, according to a recent study by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a New Delhi-based think tank.

“In your most productive states, either your surface irrigation potential has already been met, or your groundwater potential is being used in an unsustainable manner,” said Arunabha Ghosh, chief executive officer of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water. Over-exploitation of water has already happened in 15% of the total irrigated area, spanning in parts of 6-7 states, he said. “Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan are already consuming more ground water than was available annually and several other states are approaching the limits,” Mr. Ghosh said.