Markets news on stocks, currencies and oil; The Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, confirmed today that the Irish Government has given an additional €2bn is being made available to the hemorrhaging Anglo Irish Bank to support the capital position of the bank. Meanwhile, the former State telco Eircom today confirmed plans to raise prices.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheál Martin, today officially opened ESB’s 435 new megawatts gas-fired station at Aghada, Co Cork.  The station, close to Midleton in East Cork, now has the capacity to generate 963 megawatts of electricity. It is Ireland’s largest power station and ranks among the most efficient electricity generators in Europe.

Eurozone annual inflation is expected to be 1.6% in May 2010 according to a flash estimate issued by Eurostat, the statistics office of the European Union. It was 1.5% in April. In other news, the ECB (European Central Bank) said its M3 broad measure of money and credit supply in the common currency area, was unchanged in April.

Ryanair, which announced on Friday that former Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy had joined its board, today claimed the €10 travel tax is responsible for the collapse of Irish tourism. It suggests the recession is irrelevant in an argument for voodoo economics.

French insurance group AXA Global Distributors will create 200 ‘high value’ jobs in Dublin over the next 3 years. Recruitment has already commenced and it is estimated that 100 of the posts will be filled within the next 12 months.

Irish non-financial sector credit (NFC) credit, excluding valuation effects and the impact of transfers to the State toxic property loans agency NAMA, fell again in April, but at a slower pace than previous months so far in 2010. Residential mortgage lending outstanding (including securitised mortgages) declined by €348 million during April, bringing the annual rate of change in residential mortgage lending to minus 1.6 per cent.

The European Commission said today that its Consumer Confidence Indicator fell in in May;  the overall Economic Sentiment Indicator (ESI) slipped, moving back to 100.0 (-1.9 points) in the EU and to 98.4 (-2.2 points) in the Eurozone. While Industry sentiment continued to improve, all other sectoral sentiment indicators dropped in the EU and the Eurozone. The Business Climate Indicator (BCI) for the Eurozone improved marginally. The results reflects a month dominated by the debt crisis in Greece.

Markets news on stocks, currencies and commodities; Markets in the UK and the US are closed Monday for public holidays. Meanwhile, several countries in Europe are cutting spending plans in response to the debt crisis and Italy was the latest to implement austerity measures last week. However, the Eurozone as a whole isn’t tightening its fiscal belt this year amid concerns about the vitality of the global economic recovery.

Principal news stories from the Irish Independent, Irish Times, Irish Examiner, Financial Times and New York Times.

Irish economist Prof. Morgan Kelly of UCD isn’t the only one with a gloomy outlook on house prices and last week in Washington DC, IMF (International Monetary Fund) economist Prakash Loungani, forecast more falls in both the US and Europe.