Here’s the FT’s reading of the situation.
Note this extract: “As financial markets digested the remarks of Roberto Maroni, Italy’s welfare minister, the interest rate differential between Italian and German bonds rose to 23 basis points, the widest spread since November 2002.”
These are the numbers we will be following at Afoe moving forward. Maroni is [...]

But in this case the vote would be about Italy’s continuing membership of the euro-zone, rather than the EU constitution. Now before going any further, I feel the need to advise extreme caution in the face of such developments.
In the first place the call comes from the Italian Labor Minister - and member of the [...]

China is getting into car manufacture in a big way, but before going further with this, let me sidetrack you to another article in today’s FT. Here you will find two interesting details. Firstly, according to Arthur Kroeber, of China Economic Quarterly, ?Since 2003, China has gone from being a net importer of capital [...]

For once, small but good:
Growth in European service industries, which account for about one-third of the euro-region economy, unexpectedly accelerated in May to the fastest pace in seven months.
An index based on a survey of about 2,000 purchasing managers of companies including airlines and banks compiled by NTC Research Ltd. for Reuters Group Plc rose [...]

Last Monday I had some ironing to do. Then I remembered that television still has one advantage over surfer-blogging: you can do the ironing at the same time. Of course the upcoming referendum was on several channels. I could not stand more than 20 minutes of it though (neither the ironing nor [...]

Sometimes, just sometimes, being a journalist is hard. War correspondants, political columnists pressured to ‘firm-up’ an elusive source‘, BBC reporters, the list of those who could rightly complain is probably endless. But amongst the most challanging of the many missions which may occasion their way into the in-tray must, undoubtedly, be that of [...]

We’re still all waiting really. Waiting to know what the next move really in the saga is going to be (Iceland isn’t in the community yet, if I remember correctly). Staring into the tea-leaves and casting a wary eye over towards Brussels, looking desperately for clues.
What this continuing lack of definition really does is make [...]

The European Central Bank held its main refinancing rate constant at 2% for the 24th consecutive month this afternoon. No real surprise here. Perhaps the most revealing comment has been: “Whether others like it or not, the ECB isn?t an activist central bank,? a view offered to the Financial Times by one Julian Jessop, economist [...]

According to the German research institute DIW, the number of migrants from the EU 10 accession countries was far less than many anticipated.
According to the Berlin-based Deutsches Institut for Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW), the number of people who have migrated from the new member states to the older members can be estimated at 150,000. Of them, over [...]

The Latvian parliament approved the Constitution Treaty earlier this morning, by a huge majority:
“Latvia’s parliament voted overwhelmingly to support the EU constitution on Thursday, a decision lawmakers and analysts said sent a message from the new Europe to the old that the approval process must continue.
After several European leaders urged other member states to press [...]