Attention all of you people out there who think that the talk of a challenge to Julia Gillard’s leadership is nothing but a media invention.
Angela Merkel
Political snippets: A chance for an easy dollar
Kohler: did you hear the one about the bond market?
Up to January, the European Central Bank lent European private banks about €500 billion at 1% interest.
The race against a Greek debt clock
Investors are growing increasingly worried about a looming Greek debt default, as the country’s deepening recession means lenders are being asked to agree to even steeper write-offs.
What not to expect from the euro summit: a solution
Expectations are low for tonight’s make-or-break summit in Brussels. Europe might reform itself, but fail to address the immediate crisis it faces, write Glenn Dyer and Bernard Keane.
Guy Rundle: Cameron’s bulldog image in danger of losing its balls
The problem for Cameron is that he’s dealing with a triple crisis — party, country and Europe — while his enemies have only one aim, to make the Tories over as a euro sceptic outfit.
Guy Rundle: Rundle: Europe re-engineered on the run, but don’t mention the war
It is extraordinary, unprecedented, the European project that everyone was so solemn about being re-engineered on the run like, well, like the dodgy banks that put us in this mess in the first place.
Merkozy plan means more
referendums
In the past, the ratification of EU treaties by individual states has often been a timely and frustrating process. The new “Merkozy” plan will be no different, writes Keshia Jacotine.
Merkozy bands together to save the euro
Crikey media wrap: German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy unveiled their joint plan for strict debt discipline guidelines to help save the troubled currency.
Guy Rundle: Europe farce and furious on the downhill slope
In the past two weeks the possibility of a eurozone default, collapse and disarray, has gone from formally possible, to actually possible, to a real and imminent danger.
Europe crisis … time for conclusive action … or else
If you are travelling to Europe in the next month or two, take some US dollars, it could be the short-term currency of choice if the euro collapses.
Guy Rundle: Europe’s stuck, nothing changes in Italy, and the Pope must die
So Europe remains stuck in a common currency whose structural flaws it cannot resolve — and certainly cannot resolve without major reform in Italy, where the breathing space offered by the appointment of Mario Monti has been resisted.
Rundle in Rome: peoples of Europe rise up, and demand la dolce vita
Southern Europe has held to an entirely different conception of life, one in which full human beings still have room to breathe. As the Eurozone collapses, the people of Europe should look to them now for how to live.
Maley: ducking Merkozy’s heavy hand
Is Europe getting fed up with Merkozy — as the cosy duo of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel has come to be known?
Maley: feuding over a French firewall
Tensions between Paris and Berlin are set to flare, as fears grow that the flames of the debt crisis now engulfing Italy could soon spread to Belgium and France.
Celebrations under way as Berlusconi gets a shove from above
For a country that so often moves at a mediaeval pace, it has been an whirlwind 24 hours in Italian politics, writes Jo McKenna, a Rome-based freelance journalist.
Italy’s capital punishment
Europe’s debt crisis continued to roil markets overnight, with Italian bond yields surging through the critical 7% level overnight, as European officials mulled over the possibility of a radical reshaping of the eurozone.
Guy Rundle: Even Izzy Dye can run Greece as long as there’s a vote
Greece, the eurozone, the EU and the G20 were in crisis yesterday, as Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou lost the support of his deputy PM, five members of his cabinet, and several Pasok MPs, leaving the entire country, and the continent, in a state of disarray.
Greek PM’s gamble: say yes or 8 billion euros down the toilet
The hardball has started on Greece, with the IMF and European leaders letting it be known that the 8 billion euros due to be paid to Greece in about 10 days won’t be paid without a “yes” vote in Prime Minister Papandreou’s referendum.
Eurozone’s Halloween treat: a confection of silver linings and hot air
The markets have seized on the latest European deal with relief. But it’s another confection, and a humiliating one at that, write Glenn Dyer and Bernard Keane.
Markets soar after euro debt deal
Crikey media wrap: After 10 hours of negotiations, European leaders finally agreed on a bailout plan to cope with the eurozone debt crisis. The news was enough to rally world markets.
Maley: no more Italian dolce vita
As European leaders gathered in Brussels overnight in yet another attempt to stem the region’s worsening debt crisis, attention was focused on the key role that two Italians are now playing.
Guy Rundle: Europe and how a colony on the moon can save it
Europe is on the brink — and it’s a measure of how fast-moving the crisis is that I must add the phrase “at time of writing”.
Maley: the EU debt clock ticks down
With time fast running out, German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Nicolas Sarkozy again held emergency talks overnight in an attempt to settle their differences before Sunday’s crucial summit of European political chiefs.
Kohler: surrounded by Europe’s standing armies
Thomas Jefferson definitely got it right 200 years ago when he warned that banks are more dangerous than standing armies.
