VENTURE CAPITAL POST

Tumbling oil prices have strengthened rather than weakened the Federal Reserve's resolve to start raising interest rates around midyear even as volatile markets and a softening U.S. inflation outlook made investors push back the timing of the "liftoff."

Confidence among Japanese manufacturers worsened slightly in the fourth quarter and firms expect conditions to deteriorate more, highlighting the challenges premier Shinzo Abe faces in reviving the economy a day after his big win in Sunday's snap election.

The dollar rose on Friday after upbeat U.S. data suggested weaker oil prices are providing additional momentum for the American economy, which also underpinned Asian shares.

The European Central Bank should follow the example of the U.S. Federal Reserve and buy government bonds to prop up the tottering euro zone economy, the Fed's vice chair Stanley Fischer was quoted as saying in an Italian newspaper.

If the world's biggest central banks were actually coordinating a global monetary policy, they could scarcely do a better job of convincing financial markets right now.

Europe is not at risk of sliding into "full deflation" but the current rate of inflation is dangerously low, European Central Bank Vice President Vitor Constancio said on Saturday.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew emphasized to Japan's finance minister the need for Japan to use all three arrows of its economic recovery policy to escape deflation, a U.S. Treasury official said on Saturday.

The lone Federal Reserve policymaker to dissent against the U.S. central bank's decision this week to end its bond-buying stimulus said Friday that the Fed was risking its credibility by failing to take action against a worrisome drop in inflation.

With just five months left before Governor Haruhiko Kuroda's self-imposed deadline for banishing deflation, the Bank of Japan is preparing for failure, and the first casualty could be its facade of board unity.

The Bank of Japan on Tuesday maintained its massive asset buying program but offered a bleaker view on factory output, following signs that the world's third-largest economy was hit harder than expected by a sales tax increase in April.

The European Central Bank will hand out the first round of its new four-year loans on Thursday, the flagship tool in a new stimulus package it hopes will stave off deflation and revive the ailing euro zone economy.

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi was quoted by German news magazine Spiegel in an interview that there is no need to hurry to reduce the Euro Zone's main interest rate further.

Some say the Euro is overvalued while others claim it is not.