20110511 1755 Breaking News.

Italy is next in line to seek a bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund as a 'slow-motion banking crisis' unfolds in the country, Felix Zulauf, President of Zulauf Asset Management said.Everyone is focused on Spain. I think the next country to go is Italy," Zulauf told delegates at a conference in Edinburgh. "What I notice is a tremendous deposit outflow. It's a slow-motion banking crisis, and the banking system has been the big buyer of government bonds in Italy," Zulauf said.

China's inflation eased in April to 5.3 percent and other data, including for industrial output and loans, suggested the world's second-biggest economy may be cooling and there was less need for further aggressive monetary tightening.Inflation was slightly higher than expected but lower than a 32-month high in March of 5.4 percent, underlining expectations that price pressures were peaking and would start to ease in the second half of 2011.

Jim Rogers, the veteran investor and commodity bull, plans to short U.S. Treasuries, maybe today if he "gets around to it" and wants to buy more silver, he told Reuters in an interview.Rogers, who rose to prominence as co-founder of the former Quantum Fund with billionaire investor George Soros four decades ago, said he expects bond prices to fall and the U.S. dollar to rally when the Federal Reserve halts its government bond buying program at the end of June.