IMF's Lagarde heads to Moscow for debt crisis talks (Reuters)

Saxo bank chief economist Steen Jakobsen pinged me with an interesting set of comments regarding Italian interest rates....World has Major Funding GapOur estimation shows that on the 2012 interest payment alone Italy now needs to find additional 10 billion EUR to pay for the rise in interest rates.Some independent trading houses have calculated that the combined funding need for Spain and Italy combined (banks, and national debt) is 400-500 billion EUR per year for next two to three years.

International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde takes her European rescue talks to petrodollar-rich Russia on Monday before visiting Asian giants China and Japan.Lagarde's two-day stay in Moscow -- her first official foreign trip outside the European Union -- will include talks on Monday with President Dmitry Medvedev and meetings at the finance ministry and the central bank.The Kremlin said the European public debt crisis will dominate negotiations just as it had done at the recently concluded Group of 20 summit in Cannes.

The Cyprus government is scrambling to find alternative ways to fund its part of a European Union bailout, including asking for help in Moscow, after the island’s parliament resoundingly rejected the terms initially agreed. The lawmakers’ vote was seen as a complete denunciation of the controversial plan to levy a one-time tax on bank deposits of Cypriots and non-Cypriots alike. Despite the international uproar that the bailout has generated, the E.U. shows no sign of budging from its insistence that Cyprus itself must fund a part of its own rescue package.

The Cyprus government is scrambling to find alternative ways to fund its part of a European Union bailout, including asking for help in Moscow, after the island’s parliament resoundingly rejected the terms initially agreed. The lawmakers’ vote was seen as a complete denunciation of the controversial plan to levy a one-time tax on bank deposits of Cypriots and non-Cypriots alike. Despite the international uproar that the bailout has generated, the E.U. shows no sign of budging from its insistence that Cyprus itself must fund a part of its own rescue package.

International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde was due in China Wednesday for talks likely to focus on the deepening eurozone debt crisis and Beijing's possible contribution to a bailout fund.Fresh from a visit to Russia where she warned Moscow against complacency given the budget crises in eurozone states, Lagarde is due to give a speech at an international financial forum as part of her two-day visit to Beijing.

IMF head Christine Lagarde arrived in Nigeria on Sunday for her first visit to Africa as head of the fund, a spokesman said, with the trip also to take her to the neighbouring nation of Niger."IMF MD Christine Lagarde arrived in Nigeria today," the International Monetary Fund spokesman said of the crisis lender's managing director.Lagarde is to hold talks with President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja on Monday as well as with Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a respected former World Bank managing director.