VENTURE CAPITAL POST

Anxiety about Greece may keep Wall Street on edge early in the week, as the country moves toward what was once thought unthinkable: a default and a full exit from the euro zone.

The U.S. Federal Reserve is on track to raise interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade in September, according to a Reuters poll that suggests economists now are mostly confident about that timing.

Verbal missteps by the U.S. Federal Reserve have increased the risk of a volatile market reaction when the time comes to raise interest rates, the outgoing president of the Philadelphia Fed said in an interview on Friday.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said on Wednesday he is likely to buy a small business in Western Europe and he would like to buy more businesses abroad.

The dollar traded mixed on Friday after weaker-than-expected headline U.S. fourth-quarter gross domestic product data, which included the fastest pace of consumer spending since 2006 and left intact market expectations of long-term greenback gains.

After the surprises from central banks which rocked markets at the start of the year, the U.S. Federal Reserve will be watched as closely as ever this week to see that it doesn't stray from its own policy path.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann, an unabashed critic of the European Central Bank's quantitative easing (QE), told a German newspaper on Sunday he had doubts about the effectiveness of the ECB bond-buying plan.

New capital rules that penalize big banks could add pressure to JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) to break itself up to boost its stock price, a prominent stock analyst from Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) wrote on Monday.

The global economy is ending the year in a fragile state with factory activity shrinking in China, euro zone business growth remaining weak, and emerging market giant Russia in a spiraling currency crisis.

Global shares prices came under pressure on Monday as oil prices briefly sank to fresh 5-1/2 year lows in choppy trade, doing little to allay concerns that some energy producers and exporters could find themselves in dire straits as revenues slump.

The U.S. Federal Reserve would give the clearest signal next week that its easy money stance is ending if, as some expect, it drops its two-year long pledge to keep interest rates close to zero for a "considerable time".

The guessing game over the timing of euro zone money printing will intensify as the European Central Bank unveils a closely watched gauge of policy in the coming week, the highlight of a calendar dominated by Europe's malaise.

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.

The Bank of Japan Governor not only surprised the markets with his latest splurge of monetary easing. He sprang it on his own board members just two days earlier, jolted into action to stop them making a low-ball forecast that might have sunk his flagship inflation target.

The dollar and U.S. stock futures pushed higher on Wednesday after Republicans scored a sweeping victory in U.S. mid-term elections, while Asian shares wilted and oil prices extended losses after more soft economic data from China.