With the World Cup only weeks away, one of Wall Street’s leading financial houses recently switched its attention from gold, shares and the dollar to which emerging economy has the best chance of lifting the trophy in Berlin on July 9. The Goldman Sachs World Cup and Economics 2006 survey suggests there is a limit to how much overlap there is between the beautiful game and the murky world of finance.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is planning urgent talks between the world’s leading economic powers over the coming months after the organisation’s biggest shake-up in four decades gave it new powers to avert the threat of a global crisis. The new role for the IMF heralds a drop in status for the G7.
Ever since the days of Henry Ford, Detroit has been the hub of the world’s motor industry. Motor City boasted the big three — Ford, General Motors and Chrysler — but it is now a shadow of its former self. Chrysler has been swallowed by Daimler, while between them Ford and General Motors have announced 60 000 job cuts.
British Finance Minister Gordon Brown’s plan to increase aid for poor countries received a hefty boost recently when France and Britain agreed to raise billions of dollars for health and education by floating bonds on the world’s financial markets.
After weeks of behind-the-scenes haggling, Paris and London struck a compromise deal.
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/ 27 February 2006
Six of the leading players in the long-running global trade talks are to meet in London next month for what is being billed as a ”collective striptease” to unblock deadlocked negotiations through a series of mutual concessions. Sources close to the meeting — to start on March 10 — said that the aim was a deal in which deeper cuts in support for farmers in the European Union
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/ 24 February 2006
Recently, the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, warned that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) risked falling into obscurity unless it was given a radical shake-up to provide greater focus, independence and legitimacy. King called on the IMF’s shareholders to take on the responsibility of bringing the global monetary and financial watchdog up to date.
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/ 13 January 2006
Chancellor Gordon Brown admitted recently that Britain had failed to complete its ambitious development agenda in 2005. A five-point plan is to make good the omissions from a year in which British Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged to use his presidency of the G8 and European Union to champion the fight against poverty.
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/ 15 December 2005
The United States and the European Union spurned calls to end the stalemate in global trade talks as six days of negotiations in Hong Kong began on Tuesday, with Brussels and Washington at odds over support for farmers. The director general of the World Trade Organisation, warned trade ministers that they had to be ”open-minded if the talks were to be concluded successfully next year.
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/ 2 December 2005
December was supposed to be the crowning moment for the United Kingdom’s twin presidencies of the G8 and the European Union. In Hong Kong, there would be a communiqué bursting with goodies for poor countries, so that trade could join debt relief and aid as the third leg of the UK’s anti-poverty agenda.
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/ 21 November 2005
Burn the textbooks. Forget that fuddy-duddy stuff about demand and supply. Blow a raspberry at economic theory. That, apparently, is the message being sent out by the foreign exchange markets, where the dollar reached a two-year high against the euro and the yen recently.