Forget Greece; It’s Portugal That’ll Destroy the Euro: One Default Is an Accident; Two Is a Systemic Crisis – MarketWatch   “Greece is already bust — and its default is already priced into the market. But Portugal is in precisely the same position, just on a longer fuse. It too is sliding toward an inevitable default on its debts — and when it does so, it will deliver a terminal political blow to the single currency, and inflict damage on the European banking system that may well prove catastrophic.”

Federal Reserve: Benchmark Rate Will Stay Low Until ’14 – Bloomberg   “Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the Federal Reserve is considering additional asset purchases to boost growth after extending its pledge to keep interest rates low through at least late 2014.”

President Obama Proposes Mortgage Refinances for ‘Responsible Borrowers’ – CNBC   “After several largely ineffective programs to help troubled borrowers and after fruitless attempts at budging the hard-line conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, President Obama is proposing a brand new refinance program for borrowers who are current on their mortgages, regardless of who owns their loan; the catch is that this one has to go through Congress.”

Iran Starts Converting Assets to Gold to Bypass Sanctions – Bullion Street   “To bypass the move, authorities converted country’s assets in European banks to gold and shares and another part were transferred to Asian banks.”

President Obama’s Tax Deform Agenda – Forbes   “For a while there, I thought President Obama was going to embrace tax reform in his State of the Union address. Instead, following the lead of his predecessors, he offered a laundry list of new tax subsidies, bragged about some old ones, and said almost nothing about a top-to-bottom rewrite of the tax code.”