It has come to this. Does anyone remember Nicolas Sarkozy of a year ago? Back then he was being feted by the anglospheric media as a French Thatcher, a neoliberal wind of change shaking a battery of outdated perceptions to its heart and mixing a few other metaphors whilst they were at it. We blogged [...]

In America, “I’ll take my lane in the middle” is a figure of speech. In Georgia, it’s a way of life.
That is all.

From the growing list of countries in discussions with the IMF for a crisis loan program, Iceland has made the first concrete move.  As explained in today’s statement from the Fund, there is an agreement between the staff mission and the government on a huge $2.1 billion loan (huge relative to Iceland’s size) in return [...]

Mill is one of the fathers of modern Europe, but he doesn’t get much love or attention these days. So it’s nice to hear that a new biography of him is coming out, heralded by this excellent review.
My favorite bit:

Read more… or [...]

Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány announced yesterday (Wednesday) that the government had reached an agreement with commercial banks intended to protect the interests of those who have taken out foreign currency loans.
The agreement, which is expected to be signed early next week, has three key components:
1) At the request of the debtor the banks will [...]

As the BBC puts it
The new leader of the party previously headed by Austrian far-right politician Joerg Haider has admitted the two men had a “special relationship”.
Stefan Petzner told Austrian radio that Mr Haider, whom he met five years ago, was “the man of my life”. …
Mr Petzner has described feeling a magnetic attraction [...]

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn yesterday –
The Pakistani authorities have requested discussions with the IMF on an economic program supported by financial assistance from the Fund to meet the balance of payments difficulties the country is experiencing as a result of high food and fuel prices and the global financial crisis … The amount of [...]

White House announcement today –
Today, the President is inviting the leaders of the Group of 20 countries to a summit in the Washington, D.C. area, on November 15 to discuss financial markets and the global economy. The G-20 finance process, which includes key developed and emerging market countries, was established in 1999, after the last [...]

The Board of the International Monetary Fund has issued a seemingly matter-of-fact statement concerning the status of the Fund’s investigation of its Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn and allegations of abuse of power in a relationship with a subordinate.  The purpose of the statement seems to be to address an inference that might be drawn from [...]

“The Kazakh government is ready to step in,” Kazakhstan’s Prime Minister Karim Masimov said this morning in a telephone interview with Bloomberg “The Kazakh banking system with the support of the government and central bank will fulfill all obligations to international investors…..We have our own specific plan to survive without any external support….I don’t think [...]