Thirty-five floors above Frankfurt’s financial district, European Central Bank (ECB) president Jean-Claude Trichet has transformed his office into a crisis command center.  Sitting at his L-shaped wooden desk, Trichet can punch a button on a white telephone to contact any of the 20 other men and one woman who help him set monetary policy for nations ranging from Germany to Malta.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said US unemployment will keep rising and should be the focus for policy makers, and gains in the stock market show investors have been “irrationally exuberant” about a recovery.

Xerox Corp. agreed to buy Affiliated Computer Services Inc. in a deal valued at about $5.8 billion, making its biggest purchase to shift to technology services as sales of its printing equipment drop.  The acquisition will help triple sales from services to about $10 billion, Xerox said in a statement Monday. The total price of the cash-and-stock deal was about 34 percent more than Dallas-based Affiliated Computer’s stock before today’s trading.