For once something positive to report:
After months of deadlock, the Doha round of global trade talks has taken a big step forward, thanks largely to an abstruse but important deal over agricultural tariffs….On May 4th, negotiators from America, the European Union, Brazil, India and Australia hammered out a formula for converting specific tariffs on agricultural [...]

The FT is running the following story about Barroso:
Jos? Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, will drop his supervision of antitrust cases affecting the shipping industry, shortly after it emerged he took a holiday on the luxury yacht of a Greek shipping tycoon….
the timing of Mr Barroso’s decision is likely to reignite the controversy over his [...]

As the UK goes to the polls today, I feel the need to make a statement. A few weeks ago, I promised that I would deliver some posts to this blog regarding the election. Now, some of you may believe that because these posts have not appeared, I should make an apology, but that would [...]

The ECB met earlier today to conduct the monthly review of interest rate policy. It came as a surprise to noone that the outcome was to leave everything just as it is. Surprisingly though the decision this month is surrounded by a little more controversy than has been the case of late since Italy’s Berlusconi [...]

The Chinese minister of trade Bo Xilai was in Paris yesterday. Most likely this is simply a happy coincidence, but the timing couldn’t have been better. The issue of Chinese textile imports has become one of the issues in the French referendum, and minister Bo was conveniently available to make all the right gestures:
“We want [...]

Someone must have put something really bad in their lemonade. I am at loss for words about the hysteria that the ongoing German class struggle has become (for more information see the comments to my last entry). It’s like a gang fight in kindergarten.
While Nobel Price laureate G?nther Grass (literature, not economics) made headlines [...]

Currency traders around the globe lazily staring into their screens must have found themselves transfixed last Friday when the flatline indicating the value of the Chinese yuan (or renminbi if you prefer) suddenly jumped to life. And so it was that during a brief 20 minute interval the yuan surged to a level of 8.270 [...]

Rumaging around the OECD website this morning looking for the original documentation on the spate of comparative pensions articles which have been hitting the press in the last couple of days I came across something which I consider truly, truly interesting.

Read more… or [...]

Just a quick follow up on the state of play with opinion poll outcomes in France. Le Monde today reports that of four polls published yesterday two gave a majority for the ‘yes’ vote, whilst the other two suggested a significant decline in ‘no’ support (details in fold). Since the shift is partly among socialist [...]

Yesterday was the first anniversary of the entry of ten new states into the EU. It was an anniversary generally celebrated amidst a notable lack of champagne and fireworks. Perhaps we are living in more discrete and austere times. Nonetheless there have been articles here and there in the press, amongst them the one in [...]