Newspapers : 29th October

Falling oil output 'is greater threat to UK than terrorism'. Jon Swaine, The Telegraph (en)

" ... The Peak Oil group warned in a report that the country could begin feeling the effects of a severe lack of oil within five years, as oil-producing countries will be forced to wind down production due to diminished reserves ...

... Mr Leggett, whose book Half Empty expands upon his vision of a looming international catastrophe due to an emptying of global oil reserves, said he was pessimistic that innovations in oil exploration, including the tapping of tar sands, could prevent disaster.
"When they fail to meet demand, many countries will experience this as an energy crisis. Some will experience it as an energy famine, as producers start to withhold exports," he said. ..."

Audacious Porsche in $20bn 'sting'. Mathieu Robbins, The Independent (en)
" ... The hedge fund industry has seen huge growth over the past few years, with many ambitious young entrepreneurs, including Nathan Rothschild, opting to enter the sector. It also poached many senior investment bankers and private equity executives, attracted by the high returns and pay, and relative freedom of working for what are normally small firms.
Hedge funds thought they could outperform traditional investors by using increasingly exotic ways of investing their money. They also presented themselves as slight rebels, different from the staid financial establishment, often opting to set themselves up in Mayfair, west London, rather than the City or Canary Wharf. There will be those in Germany who will relish the discomfort of the hedge funds. In 2004, a German politician, Franz Muenterfering, described private equity firms and hedge funds as "locusts".

Sarkozy, the natural leader of Europe. Charles Bremner, The Times (en)
" ...The financial mess of the past month has opened a boulevard for the French president to do what he believes he does best: rushing into the breach to take charge ...
... It has been a good autumn for Super Sarko. Before the banking drama, he had already ridden to the rescue to halt the Russian advance on Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, last August ...
... Sarko has in effect reverted to old French custom of strong intervention by the state. Its rulers, from King Louis XIV through to the post-war Republic of Charles de Gaulle, practised the tradition that l'état knows best. Some of the time, they have been right ...
... The Germans are amused by the presumption of the "Napoleon of Neuilly", as some of their commentators call Sarko, referring to his base in the posh western suburb ...
... In reality the crisis has exposed some of the weakness of the Union rather than its ability to pull together in crisis. The rescue has been run by national governments, not by the Union's supranational institutions -- the executive Commission, the court and parliament ...
... The United States has been forced to recognize that Europe's mix of state and market is not so out-of-date as it thought. Keynes is back and American leadership of the world is more in doubt than it has been at any time since the 1940s. Sarkozy believes that with les Anglo-Saxons discredited, it's time for the old continent to seize the moment and he wants to be the one in front. The next year will be interesting. "

Public Life is Public. The Times (en)
" ... The bureaucrats who recorded these items may actually have a sense of humour. Commissioners are powerful and necessarily well connected. It is well known that they are frequent guests on the yachts and jets of the very wealthy. Yet their rules for declaring interests are structured so that any meaningful act of hospitality goes undeclared.
Under the commissioners’ code of conduct, the public cannot know who entertains them or whether they mix business and pleasure in what they choose to call their private time, unless the commissioners themselves choose to say so. Usually, and unsurprisingly, they do not ...
... The code of conduct was drafted in haste by Neil Kinnock in 1999 after the resignation of Jacques Santer’s entire Cabinet, which had been condemned as shot through with fraud, corruption and bad management ... "

Warsaw to speed euro adoption. Jan Cienski, The FT (en)
" ... Poland’s government on Tuesday spelled out the country’s path to adopting the euro by 2012, part of a series of moves designed to help calm spooked investors who have been retreating from the Polish zloty as emerging market currencies are buffeted by the global financial crisis.
The plan calls for the government to begin talks on amending the constitution by early next year – the current document allows only Poland’s central bank to set monetary policy. Later in 2009, Poland would enter the ERM-2 European exchange rate mechanism, and the final exchange rate between the euro and the zloty would be set in the summer of 2011. Poland would be admitted to the common currency by January 1 2012 ... "