Death in Duisburg
Jul 25th 2010, 19:31 by B.U.| BERLIN
IT IS going to take some time to sort out just what happened at this year's "Love Parade" and who is to blame. On July 24th 19 people died and more than 300 were injured at the annual festival of techno music, which took place this year in Duisburg, a city in Germany's Ruhr region.This is a horrible blot on a series of celebrations that were supposed to mark the area's renaissance. The Ruhr built its earlier prosperity on coal and steel, but mining is no longer competitive in Germany and is being wound down, while steel... ...
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Lagarde unstressed
Jul 22nd 2010, 21:36 by The Economist online | LONDON AND PARIS
THIS week the International Monetary Fund urged Europe's bank regulators to disclose more detail of the "stress tests" being carried out on 91 of the EU's biggest banks, and on how individual banks scored in those tests. The fund also said they should be applied to a larger number of banks (its comments are in paragraph 26 of this PDF document). Some analysts are worried that the tests will be a whitewash, and that hardly any of the banks will be allowed to fail them: if so, this may defeat the... ...
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Consumer choice or consumer protection: the next big policy debate
Jul 13th 2010, 15:48 by A.P. | LONDON
WHEN banks are berated for being too stingy with loans, one legitimate defence is that subdued demand for credit is as much to blame as problems with supply. By the time demand picks up, the banks will have another target to point fingers at—their regulators. Higher capital and liquidity ratios are not the only things in the offing; so too is a much more intrusive approach to individual lending decisions, particularly in countries where housing markets boomed.
The Financial Ser... ...
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The spoils of victory
Jul 13th 2010, 16:41 by The Economist | MADRID
SPAIN'S World Cup victory comes in the nick of time for José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. As the prime minister prepares to face off opposition leader Mariano Rajoy in a state-of-the-nation parliamentary debate on Wednesday, the country is still basking in the euphoria that greeted the national team’s return from Johannesburg.
Tens of thousands of supporters took to the streets in Madrid to see the 23 national heroes aboard a double-decker bus. For a few delirious hours, the country forgot about its 20% unemploym... ...
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The accountant and the president
Jul 7th 2010, 17:35 by The Economist online | PARIS
FOR weeks, the French have been mesmerised by the Bettencourt affair, a party-donations and an alleged tax-evasion scandal concerning Liliane Bettencourt, the billionaire heiress to the L’Oréal cosmetics empire. Now, the saga has taken an even more troubling turn, after Ms Bettencourt’s former accountant suggested that the billionaire had donated illegal sums to help finance the 2007 presidential campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy.
Claire Thibout, who worked as an accountant for Mrs Bettencourt and her ... ...
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