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Europe’s financial fire brigade is hiring.

Successful candidates should have the “ability to develop innovative legal solutions,” an “eye for detail,” and the “ability to argue convincingly and achieve a consensus among colleagues and third parties,” proclaims the website of the European Financial Stability Facility.

And those skills could come in handy pretty quickly.

After this Sunday’s summit of EU leaders, the EFSF will wield massive financial power to contain the eurozone’s debt troubles and keep them from plunging the global economy into another recession and putting thousands of people out of a job.

And yet the bailout fund, backed by euro780 billion ($1.1 trillion) in financial guarantees from the 17 euro states, has a tiny staff _ 18, counting two secretaries. That is expected to increase slightly in coming months, taking the core team behind Europe’s main anti-crisis weapon to 25.

After already funding large parts of the bailouts for Ireland and Portugal, the EFSF will soon take over the emergency loans to Greece _ some euro27 billion ($37 billion) left over from the first rescue package with several tens of billions expected to come through a second loan program.

More importantly, the fund is now the number one institution charged with stopping the debt crisis from engulfing large economies like Italy and Spain, helping to stabilize wobbling banks across the continent and protect the future of the euro.

That role could turn it into a bond insurer or see it manipulate government bond prices like a central bank.

The fund’s headquarters, in a nondescript office block on the outskirts of Luxembourg city, look a lot less spectacular than one may expect. Apart from the blue and yellow EFSF labels on the mail boxes, there is nothing to suggest that actions taken within the building could determine the fortunes of the 330 million citizens of the eurozone.

The fund was hastily set up in the summer of 2010, when the currency union’s leaders realized that their initial euro110 billion ($152 billion) bailout of Greece was not enough to stem market panic over high debt in several euro countries.

Because creating an international institution would have taken too much time, the EFSF was registered as a private company under Luxembourg law, taking over an empty suite of offices from the European Investment Bank.

More than a year later, the premises haven’t changed much _ dark blue carpet, gray hallways and papers piled high in offices. In expectation of the new staff and responsibilities, the EFSF recently took over another corner of the EIB’s office space that still stands empty.

Presiding over the whole thing is Chief Executive Klaus Regling, a gray-haired EU veteran who helped set up the single currency in the 1990s and then unsuccessfully fought to protect the union’s rules on government spending a decade later.

It was the limitations of those rules that allowed countries like Greece to run up massive debts and failed to counteract Ireland’s property bubble and Portugal’s pervasively low growth _ the very problems Regling is now trying to solve.

“It was totally unpredictable how this would evolve,” says Regling, as he thinks back to June 8, 2010, when he interviewed for, was offered and accepted the job at the helm of a yet-to-be-created institution within less than 24 hours quick payday loans. “I was actually worried that it may become too boring.”

No such luck.

Instead, the fund has seen its role evolve from acting as a financial backstop so big that its mere presence would prevent it from ever having to be used _ that hope was disappointed when Ireland asked for a bailout last November _ to essentially turning into a European Monetary Fund, the eurozone’s lender of last resort for cash-strapped governments.

“Of course it’s exciting to be in the middle of the storm,” says Juha Kilponen, one of the EFSF’s finance experts who came on board just as Ireland asked for help. “But of course the problems are very big.”

At their summit this Sunday, eurozone leaders are expected to set up a complicated scheme that could increase the EFSF’s firing power so it is fit for the next hot phase in the fight against the crisis.

It’s in moments like these that the staff’s legal and financial expertise will come into play. The EFSF has to operate through a complicated web of European rules and treaties where 17 governments, central banks and bureaucracies in Brussels each have a say _ and often widely divergent opinions.

The fund’s euro780 billion in guarantees translate into euro440 billion ($608 billion) it can actually give out in loans, since it needs extra guarantees to obtain the AAA-rating that allows it to raise money at low interest rates.

Of those euro440 billion, euro43.7 billion have already been promised to Ireland and Portugal. Some euro100 billion will likely go to Greece, leaving the EFSF with just under euro300 billion to contain the crisis.

That’s way too little to recapitalize ailing banks across Europe, get them ready for a potential default of Greece, and buy up Spanish and Italian bonds to keep the countries’ funding rates down.

Instead, the EFSF could start acting as an insurer for bond issues from those countries, using its guarantees as protection for banks and other investors against a first round of potential losses. That could theoretically multiply the fund’s financial impact up to around euro1 trillion, analysts say.

Such a sum was unimaginable when Kalin Anev was asked in May 2010 to help set up the EFSF. Originally an employee at the EIB, Anev was the one who registered the bailout fund with the Luxembourg chamber of commerce, organized phone lines and computers and helped hire the rest of the staff.

“It shows how fast Europe also can act, if they want to do something,” Anev, now the EFSF’s secretary general and institutional memory, says not without pride. “In a month’s time we were able to set up this very complex organization.”

And that organization is proving to be an attractive place to work. For each job ad, the EFSF receives 200 to 400 applicants.

By now, the fund has employees from Germany, Finland, France and the Netherlands, but also from Portugal, Italy and Spain.

And although resistance to the bailouts has been growing both in rich and poor countries, Kilponen and Anev insist that the reaction they get to their job is mostly positive.

“A lot of people have trust and hope that we do the right job,” says Anev. “So most people, they wish you the best and good luck.”

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The French government says French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will speak by phone later Monday to discuss an upcoming EU summit amid signs they disagree on parts of a new crisis plan.

Government spokeswoman Valerie Pecresse says that at the weekly cabinet meeting Wednesday Sarkozy emphasized that the Oct. 23 summit in Brussels “is a crucial moment, for Europe and for France.”

That view appears to clash with Germany’s recent downplaying of the summit’s importance Business Card Holders.

Earlier this week, German finance chief Wolfgang Schaeuble dampened expectations by saying that Sunday’s summit wouldn’t produce a comprehensive solution to the eurozone debt crisis that threatens to cause another global recession.

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Apple Inc. said Monday it sold 4 million iPhone 4S units in the three days since it went on sale Oct. 14.

Sales in stores began on Friday in Japan, Australia, France, the U.K., Germany, Canada and the United States.

The company took more than 1 million online orders in the first 24 hours after the release of the iPhone 4S, exceeding the 600,000 for the iPhone 4, though it was sold in fewer countries.

Unveiled just a day before Apple Chairman Steve Jobs died, it was initially dubbed a disappointment, partly because it looked identical to its predecessor low interest rate personal loans. But anticipation of its “Siri” voice software helped it set an online record in orders on Oct. 7.

Along with the new iPhone, more than 25 million customers are using the iOS 5 mobile operating system, in the first five days of its release, and more than 20 million customers have signed up for its free cloud services, Apple said.

The latest iPhone will be available in 22 more countries on Oct. 28 and more than 70 countries by the end of the year.

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Slovakia’s prime minister has raised the stakes ahead of a crucial vote on expanding Europe’s bailout fund, by linking it to a confidence vote in her government.

Ahead of talks with her coalition partners, Iveta Radicova confirmed that a coalition partner has not accepted a compromise offer and added that the vote later in Parliament “will be linked to a confidence vote in this government.”

That suggests her government will fall if the vote is not carried, though it does not necessarily mean early elections under the terms of the Slovak constitution.

On Monday, the four-party coalition, which met for three hours, was unable to agree on a compromise deal.

The 17 nations that use the euro must all approve expanding the powers of the bailout fund, which is designed to shore up Europe’s defenses against the debt crisis.

Slovakia’s “no” would be a bad signal for already nervous financial markets. Ahead of the vote, European markets were giving up some of their recent gains though remained sharply higher on the week. The euro meanwhile was solid above $1.36.

All other EU nations have backed the expanded powers for the EU bailout fund.

Slovakia, a nation of 5.5 million people, would contribute about 1 percent, or euro7.7 billion ($10.5 billion). With the help of EU funds and foreign investments, it has benefited significantly from its membership in the eurozone and the EU and become a leading European car exporter.

The outcome of the Slovak parliamentary vote is uncertain because a junior member of the four-party governing coalition is strictly opposed to boosting the fund.

The Freedom and Solidarity Party’s chairman, Richard Sulik recently described the expanded bailout fund “a road to hell” and vowed again Monday to block it.

Without the votes from Sulik’s party, the coalition government would have to rely on the opposition, but it’s unlikely to provide any help.

The major opposition party, Smer-Social Democracy of former Prime Minister Robert Fico, supports the fund expansion in principle but was ready to vote for it in exchange for nothing less than early elections.

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Researchers who study economic growth and how technology helps drive long-term development are among the top contenders for the Nobel prize for economics being awarded Monday, Swedish Nobel guessers say.

A day before the announcement of the prestigious 10 million kronor ($1.5 million) award, Americans Robert Barro and Paul Romer stand out as favorites for the prize for their research on growth, leading experts say.

The Nobel Committee maintains it doesn’t pay attention to current events when picking a winner, but an award to growth theory would be closely watched as the world debates how to revive the economy in the face of large public spending cuts.

Romer, a former senior fellow at Stanford University now at New York University, has been hot “for a couple of decades,” said Uppsala University economics professor Daniel Waldenstrom. That is one of the unspoken criteria to win the prize because it typically takes that much time to evaluate if results are sustainable.

“His research is focused on powers within technology and development that drive growth, that had previously been overlooked,” Waldenstrom told The Associated Press. “He has showed that it is actually significant for long-term growth and has changed our view of what drives growth.”

Romer has constructed mathematical models showing how technological advances are the result of specific decisions to invest in research and development. Later, he advanced his ideas, concluding that to make real progress, societies must also keep implementing better rules that structure how people work together.

He could share the prize with growth theory pioneer Barro, a professor of economics at Harvard University, who has specifically looked at the links between innovation, public investment and growth.

Hubert Fromlet, a professor in International Economics at the Jonkoping International Business School and Linnaeus University in Sweden, put Barro among his top-five candidates for the prize.

Fromlet correctly predicted that American economist Dale Mortensen would win the award last year for his work, together with fellow prize winners Peter Diamond and Christopher Pissarides on developing a theory that helps explain why many people can remain unemployed despite a large number of job vacancies.

“You have to look at research areas: What areas haven’t been awarded in a while?” Fromlet said. “Most often a certain research area is awarded, but sometimes lifetime achievements can also be awarded.”

The economics prize is not among the original awards established by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in his 1895 will, but was created in 1968 by the Swedish central bank in his memory.

Fromlet said other hot candidates for this year’s award include: the India-born game theorist Avinash Dixit; French professor Jean Tirole, for work within industrial organization and other fields; as well as MIT professor Jerry A. Hausman, who created a method that allows scientists to evaluate their statistical models.

Also mentioned are Douglas Diamond of the University of Chicago, for his analysis of financial crises, or American professors Anne Krueger and Gordon Tullock for their description of a behavior they called rent-seeking, which refers to actions to manipulate an environment for personal gains without contributing to productivity.

Another potential candidate is American professor Martin S. Feldstein for his work on macroeconomics and public finance, including research on public pension systems.

Since the economy prize was first awarded in 1969, more than 40 Americans have received it.

Last week, Bruce Beutler of the U.S. and Frenchman Jules Hoffmann won medicine prize for their research on innate immunity, when receptor proteins that recognize bacteria and other microorganisms as they enter the body activate the first line of defense in the immune system.

They shared it with Canadian-born Ralph Steinman, who died three days before the announcement, and who was honored for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity.

U.S.-born scientists Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess won the physics prize for discovering that the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace, while Israeli scientist Dan Shechtman won the chemistry award for his discovery of quasicrystals, a mosaic-like chemical structure that researchers previously thought was impossible.

Acclaimed Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer won the literature prize and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman of Yemen shared the Nobel Peace Prize “for their nonviolent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work”.

The awards are always handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896.

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Online:

http://www.nobelprize.org

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European Central Bank head Jean-Claude Trichet warned there are increasing risks for the eurozone’s waning economic recovery and less chance of inflation _ clear signals the bank is done raising interest rates for some time.

At a news conference, Trichet offered new, gloomier economic projections after the bank’s 23-member governing council left the benchmark refinancing rate unchanged at 1.5 percent.

Pressure had risen on the bank to freeze its rate hike campaign after a turbulent summer in which worries grew that the 17-nation currency bloc’s debt crisis was hurting consumers and businesses and global growth was stalling.

Trichet said the eurozone economy was expected “to grow moderately” but that that assessment was “subject to particularly high uncertainty and intensified downside risk.”

Meanwhile, the risk of excessive inflation, which he had previously described as leaning to the upside, was now “broadly balance” with an equal chance of inflation below forecasts.

Trichet turned aside questions about whether rates are on hold, saying “we are never pre-committed, and we stand ready to do whatever is necessary.”

But economists say the lower inflation estimate and reduced growth expectations are signs that the bank will not raise rates soon. It controversially raised rates a quarter point in April and July, based on earlier expectations for more inflation and stronger growth.

Shadows over Europe’s recovery have gathered quickly since the bank last made a rate decision on Aug. 4. Indicators of business and consumer optimism have sagged and second quarter growth came in at a bare 0.2 percent. The continent’s debt crisis has led to dizzying ups and down on stock and bond markets, which is now weighing on consumption and production.

The uncertainty over growth also pushed Britain’s Bank of England to leave rates unchanged on Thursday, at a record low of 0.5 percent, although in Britain’s case inflation remains stubbornly high at 4.4 percent.

Eurozone officials are trying to contain a crisis triggered by market concerns that governments cannot handle their high debt loads. Fears of default have raised borrowing rates for financially troubled countries, to the point where Greece, Ireland and Portugal have need bailouts from other eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund.

With prospects for the economy worsening, some experts even think the bank may have to cut rates if Europe’s debt crisis takes a turn for the worse. Economists at the Royal Bank of Scotland see a 40 percent chance that the bank will have to slash rates by a half percent by the end of this year.

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Medtronic, the world’s largest medical device maker, says its fiscal first-quarter earnings slipped 1 percent as challenges in spinal products and its biggest business, implantable cardioverter defibrillators, countered other revenue gains.

The Minneapolis-based company says net income fell to $821 million, or 77 cents per share, from $830 million, or 76 cents per share.

Adjusted earnings were $845 million, or 79 cents per share, for the quarter ended July 29.

Revenue climbed 7 percent to $4.05 billion, with most of the increase attributable to favorable foreign currency rates.

Analysts forecast earnings of 79 cents per share on revenue of $3.98 billion.

Medtronic has struggled to maintain earnings growth amid sluggish sales of its two leading products: heart defibrillators and spinal implants.

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What to do?

The stock market has proved again that it’s capable of making vicious attacks on your money. But just when you think all is lost, the market also can transform into its gentler self.

The past few weeks have been enough to make you crazy, especially if you are among the great majority of people who don’t follow the stock market day in and day out and imagine, incorrectly, that someone actually knows what’s going to happen.

Let’s start there. If you have been following the news, you know that there is talk again of a possible recession, and there are worries that debt problems in Europe could cause problems in banks pay day loans.

Notable economist Martin Feldstein said there is a 2-1 chance of a recession within the next 12 months. Goldman Sachs says there’s only a 1-in-3 chance. So don’t trust anyone who claims they know. Crystal balls are foggy. But here’s what you can do to insulate yourself from trouble and still build the future you want:

Protect the money you will need soon

A marked slowdown in European economic growth is overshadowing a meeting Tuesday between the leaders of Germany and France aimed at getting the eurozone’s 17 countries to work closer together to dig Europe out of its debt crisis.

The meeting between Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris comes after a week of turmoil in financial markets, largely blamed on Europe’s sprawling government debts and worries that European leaders aren’t doing enough to address them. It also comes a day after the European Central Bank revealed that it splashed out more money than ever trying to appease the markets.

Europe’s sagging growth prospects make it even harder for governments to shrink their debts. Economic growth in the 17 countries that use the euro sagged to a lackluster quarterly rate of 0.2 percent in the second quarter, as a previously robust expansion in Germany almost ground to a halt, according to EU figures Tuesday.

“The longer the sovereign debt market remains stressed, the greater will be the damage to the wider economy,” said Lloyd Barton, senior economic advisor to Ernst & Young. “A further deterioration in financial conditions could severely damage the outlook for the whole of the eurozone.”

The downbeat growth news weighed on markets, and provided yet more evidence that the global economy is slowing down sharply, following disappointing second-quarter growth figures from the United States.

Financial markets have been hugely volatile of late, partly over fears that Italy and Spain, the eurozone’s third and fourth largest economies, may find it too expensive to service their debts. Those concerns triggered last week’s intervention in the bond markets from the ECB, which has increasingly stepped in as Europe scrambles.

France and Germany, which together account for almost half of the eurozone’s economic output, are taking the lead in pushing for reforms. But, speculation that the two leaders would consider proposals for the eurozone to issue jointly guaranteed government debt appear to have been dashed, with officials for both sides indicating that would not be on the agenda.

Germany has remained firm in its stance that other EU countries must exert more fiscal discipline.

The discussions will center on “measures for better agreement of financial policies,” Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said.

Officials for both Merkel and Sarkozy said Monday that jointly guaranteed eurobonds would not be on the agenda.

Analysts forecast that Tuesday’s meeting could set the stage for future political decisions about the euro and European integration, but no immediate breakthroughs.

“Don’t expect any game-changers from today’s meeting,” said Neil MacKinnon, global macro strategist at VTB Capital. “The eurozone debt and banking crisis has yet to be properly resolved, and the future viability of monetary union is a choice between moving towards fully fledged fiscal union or considering the possibility of a break-up in monetary union.”

European growth prospects are a growing concern too. Until now Germany’s economy, Europe’s biggest, had been growing strongly despite Europe’s government debt crisis.

The eurozone’s growth rate was well short of the 0.8 percent recorded in the first quarter, and was largely due to an abrupt slowdown in Germany. Germany’s economy has helped support the eurozone through the government debt crisis. Its world-renowned companies have tapped export markets all around the world, particularly in faster-growing emerging countries.

The chief of the International Monetary Fund urged rich-country governments not to squeeze their budgets so far that they stifle growth.

“For the advanced economies, there is an unmistakable need to restore fiscal sustainability through credible consolidation plans,” Lagarde wrote in the Financial Times. “At the same time we know that slamming on the brakes too quickly will hurt the recovery and worsen job prospects.”

France was caught in the market crossfire last week, with investors worrying about the financial health of the country’s banks in particular and whether it would be the next country after the U.S. to lose its triple-A credit rating.

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