Newspapers : 1st October

Financial crisis hits Russians. Adrian Blomfield, The Telegraph (en)
"... As the place is frequented by oligarchs such as Roman Abramovich, as well as a host of multi-millionaires known as minigarchs or nanogarchs, depending on their value, this was serious stuff.
Falling into conversation with one patron, an impeccably dressed man in his late thirties who introduced himself as the owner of another nightclub, I asked him where everybody was.
"They are sitting at home drinking cheap vodka and thinking about killing themselves," he replied ..."

We're back to the world of tight credit and miserly banks. Hamish McRae, The Independent (en)
"... What we can see is a world where it will be much more difficult to borrow money. For those who can remember, it will be more like the 1950s and 1960s. Then, if you wanted a mortgage, you had to have built up a deposit in the building society or bank that might lend you the money ..."

Sarkozy seeks EU accounting rule change. Ben Hall in Paris and Nikki Tait, The FT (en)
" ... Banks and insurers have complained that so-called mark-to-market rules – a snap shot of value – forced them constantly to write down the value of their assets, putting them under further financial pressure. France wants amendments “giving time to banks to smooth the effects” of the mark-to-market standard, said an official in Paris, with a longer-term review of the whole system ...
... Banks and insurers have complained that so-called mark-to-market rules – a snap shot of value – forced them constantly to write down the value of their assets, putting them under further financial pressure. France wants amendments “giving time to banks to smooth the effects” of the mark-to-market standard, said an official in Paris, with a longer-term review of the whole system ... "

Triple blow spurs central banks. Chris Giles, The FT (en)

" ... The world’s central banks scrambled on Tuesday to address three simultaneous crises in money markets that led to violent jumps in interest rates as the financial system remained under severe stress.
The unpleasant trio were the enormous uncertainty created by the failure of the US administration’s plan to purchase toxic assets from banks, a severe shortage of US dollars in banks outside the US at the end of the quarter, and the breakdown of trust in money markets that has led to a drought of funds for those banks needing to borrow ..."

Insurgents in Afghanistan Are Gaining, Petraeus Says. Carlotta Gall, The NYT (en)

" ... ''Obviously the trends in Afghanistan have been in the wrong direction, and I think everyone is rightly concerned about them,” ... “People often ask, ‘What did you learn from Iraq that might be transferable to Afghanistan?’ ” he said. “The first lesson, the first caution really, is that every situation like this is truly and absolutely unique, and has its own context and specifics and its own texture,” he said ..."