Nicolas Sarkozy has served up his second austerity budget in as many months, in a bid to retain France’s AAA credit rating. The president wants to cling on to those three precious letters at all costs. There are elections in six months’ time and he isn’t doing well in the polls. Austerité Part Deux consists
The word sweeping across Italy is that the PM may be forced to step down in a matter of hours, even “minutes”. Ex-minister Giuliano Ferrara says: “That Silvio Berlusconi is about to resign is clear. It is a question of hours, some say of minutes.” And he couldn’t leave too soon. The Italian bond yield
The gathering of G20 leaders in glitzy Cannes will turn out to be an affair to remember, for all the wrong reasons. If there’s a red carpet, it’ll probably be borrowed and will symbolise the state of many nations’ finances. The main topic of the meeting will be the escalating drama in the eurozone. Here’s
There’s only one thing more humiliating for the eurozone than China buying up its sovereign bonds — and that is if China doesn’t. To this end, head of the EFSF Klaus Regling, currently on a sales run in Asia, has said that some of the bonds of his newly souped-up SPIV may be denominated in
Politics is serious business, especially when the world’s economy is at stake, but so much of what’s going on in the eurozone now – especially in Italy – resembles opera buffa. Today in Rome, amid rumours that Berlusconi would throw in the towel in January (but not because of bunga bunga, because of bungling over
What a weekend this is going to be. Or not. Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy have said that EU leaders won’t be able to produce a bailout plan for the eurozone by Sunday, after their much anticipated weekend summit. Instead, they will only be able to come up with a plan after another summit on
It’s difficult for the outside world to understand the huge significance that Gilad Shalit’s release, this morning, has for Israel. A soldier captured by Hamas five years ago, he has become a huge cause célèbre — to the extent that black cabs in London were even commissioned with his picture on it. Books that he
The Occupy movement – or #Occupy if you follow it on Twitter – started as an anti-banking protest in New York a month ago, and has since spread from Madrid to Tokyo to Sydney. Today at noon, Occupy London Stock Exchange will kick off, though it’s doubtful if activists will actually, well, occupy the London
The euro and European stocks have risen modestly, but markets aren’t exactly full of enthusiasm about Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy’s announcement on the eurozone crisis yesterday. As usual, the German and French leaders were glaringly short on detail. Meanwhile, one of the few things they were clear about – doing “whatever is necessary for
This is not the best time to move from East to West. The thought occurs to me as I sit in a British bank, at its Westminster branch no less, waiting to open my first UK account. The procedure takes two hours, stretched across two appointments over two days. In the same period of time,
So the Bank of England has pulled the lever on a second round of Quantitative Easing. Apparently sluggish economic growth, plus more ominous signs from the eurozone, have persuaded the central bank it can’t wait any longer to print more money. But given the evidence from QE1 – only a small boost to GDP accompanied
The dramatic – some would say theatrical – exit of Alexei Kudrin as Russia’s finance minister couldn’t have come at a worst time. The world economy is incredibly fragile and oil prices are in flux. But is Kudrin, highly respected for his fiscal policies and a member of Putin’s inner circle, merely pushing for promotion?
Well, so much for that. The FTSE 100 fell as much as 1.7 per cent this morning, while overnight the euro and Asian stock markets tumbled, after Europe’s leaders announced their grand 2-trillion-euro plan over the weekend to drag the Eurozone out of the mire. It appears the markets are well past the point of
The politics of ‘get the rich’ is going global and even the rich are joining in. While few countries have adopted the equivalent of Britain’s 50p tax, many are baring their teeth at the very well-off. In America, this is now being done by an unlikely alliance between Barack Obama and Warren Buffet. The billionaire
Gordon Brown notoriously sold British gold for $275 an ounce, costing Britain several billion. But has our subsequent decision not to buy gold also cost us dear? The Tory press office has had fun with gold’s rise, tweeting that it means Brown’s disastrous foray into asset management cost £12 billion. But as John Rentoul asked,
As the EU debt drama continues unspooling like a perversely watchable soap opera (the FT’s Neil Hume describes it as ‘eurozone crisis porn’), an intriguing sub-plot has emerged: Britain is suing the European Central Bank. The Treasury is unhappy with an ECB move to limit the kind of euro-denominated products that can pass through UK
So what’s the upshot of yesterday’s Vickers review into banking? A research note issued today by UBS puts it bluntly: Lloyds to do better, Barclays to shrink and HSBC to quit Britain entirely. The UBS note, written by Alastair Ryan and John-Paul Crutchley, points out that HSBC took not a penny of bailout money. It
Italy is turning to deep-pocketed China in the hope Beijing will help stave off its financial crisis by making “significant” purchases of Italian bonds and investments in strategic companies, reports the FT. If true, this could help allay fears that Greece’s debt fiasco will engulf the entire eurozone; indeed, FT’s article late yesterday helped the
American travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux’s latest book, The Tao of Travel, is a compilation of excerpts from his own travel writings as well as those of authors such as Nabokov, Greene, Hemingway, Samuel Johnson, Chatwin and Waugh. Currently in London on a promotional tour, we chat to him during a gap in his
So we’ve seen the ceremony at Westminster Abbey. How was the Royal Wedding celebrated – by expats and locals alike – around the world? In Afghanistan, British troops celebrated with bunting on the front line. In Australia, foods associated with the ‘Mother Country’ flew off supermarket shelves, with the biggest sellers being Maynards wine gums
