"US gas now costs just a third of prices in European markets and a sixth of gas sold in Japan, where it’s $15 per mBtu. An analysis unit of the US Department of Energy is on Thursday expected to release a study on the impacts of exporting liquefied natural gas to higher-priced markets."

"

While there are exceptionally high rates of youth unemployment, especially in southern Europe, there is more of a safety net for the victims than in the Depression. And if today’s protesters articulate no coherent programme, it seems clear that underlying frustrations are to do with perceptions of unfairness, not immiseration.

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To convert the business man into the profiteer is to strike a blow at capitalism, because it destroys the psychological equilibrium which permits the perpetuance of unequal rewards. The businessman is only tolerable so long as his gains can be held to bear some relation to what, roughly and in some sense, his activities have contributed to society.”

"

"Oilmen refer to Kashagan, a huge oilfield in Kazakhstan, as “cash all gone”."

"In 1990, the largest foreign direct investor was Fruit of the Loom, making T-shirts in Donegal. Now the country is clustered with investments by Intel and Pfizer, Google and Merck, Apple and Siemens. In all they generate €110bn in exports and account for two-thirds of both corporation tax revenue and private sector research and development spending."

"This is actually not a flippant question – and the answer is yes. Not because Berlusconi’s hair has any effect whatsoever on the Italian economy, but because his hair is (or was) a pretty neat expression of Berlusconi’s approach to life and governing, which increasingly seemed to be: if it doesn’t go your way, fake it."

"

In effect, Italy is being asked to repeat what it achieved from 1995 onwards, when it managed several successive years with primary budget surpluses above 3 per cent of GDP. But that was at a time when the economy was growing at a decent clip, quite unlike what will happen next year. If such a large fiscal consolidation can be achieved in the teeth of a recession, it will be very impressive, to say the least

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Good luck to the new Prime Minister. He is certainly going to need it.

"

"She will not allow things to get so bad that the eurozone collapses; but she will not give so much money that the backsliders slacken their efforts."

"

…below the surface of the euro area’s public debt and banking crisis lies a balance-of-payments crisis caused by a misalignment of internal real exchange rates…

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Germany should accept the risks of the former path. I know that its nightmare is the hyperinflation of 1923. Yet the brutal austerity of 1930-32 finally brought Adolf Hitler to power.

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"«I used to think if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the President or the Pope or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everyone»."

"AOL once appeared to be the future of media, and Time Warner the past. A little over a decade later, what was old is new again. Even muggles can learn a few tricks"

"A VP Finance is largely about “what happened” and a little about “what is happening right now?"

"Il Giornale, a Milan daily owned by the Berlusconi family, compared Mr Sarkozy’s “arrogance” with the headbutt delivered by France’s Zinedine Zidane against Italy’s Marco Materazzi in the 2006 football World Cup final. It said Mr Sarkozy had little to laugh about in the run-up to his election campaign thanks to the state of France’s banks and industry."