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Little Luxembourg has a GDP of $55bn, which puts it between Oman and Belarus, in 69th place on the IMF list. But per capita it's by far number 1, ranking well ahead of oil-rich Qatar and Norway, by virtue of its small, one-half million population. The Luxembourg prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, who chairs the Eurogroup of finance ministers had a hissy-fit on Friday when his thunder was stolen by Maria Fekter, the Austrian finance minister. The group announced that the fiscal firewall for the Eurozone would be boosted to Euro 700bn by allowing the new ESM to run in parallel with what's left of the EFSF. Juncker wanted to make the announcement but Fekter dropped in on him. This sent him fuming into the car park. The media jumped on this as usual as a sign of dysfunctionality. Indeed the scepticism in the UK about the Eurozone's turmoil is quite deafening, bordering on racism. To me it's actually been quite a surprise how well the Eurozone players have managed one of the most complex problems ever seen in global finance. No doubt Juncker will recover his poise. The QSL is from Radio-Tele-Luxembourg heard in Cape Town on AM in 1968. At the time this was the station that UK teenagers were listening to under the sheets at night because it was playing the great pop music of the day: music which the dinosaur BBC of the time refused to play. And down in distant South Africa we were listening to.
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Little Luxembourg has a GDP of $55bn, which puts it between Oman and Belarus, in 69th place on the IMF list. But per capita it's by far number 1, ranking well ahead of oil-rich Qatar and Norway, by virtue of its small, one-half million population. The Luxembourg prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, who chairs the Eurogroup of finance ministers had a hissy-fit on Friday when his thunder was stolen by Maria Fekter, the Austrian finance minister. The group announced that the fiscal firewall for the Eurozone would be boosted to Euro 700bn by allowing the new ESM to run in parallel with what's left of the EFSF. Juncker wanted to make the announcement but Fekter dropped in on him. This sent him fuming into the car park. The media jumped on this as usual as a sign of dysfunctionality. Indeed the scepticism in the UK about the Eurozone's turmoil is quite deafening, bordering on racism. To me it's actually been quite a surprise how well the Eurozone players have managed one of the most complex problems ever seen in global finance. No doubt Juncker will recover his poise. The QSL is from Radio-Tele-Luxembourg heard in Cape Town on AM in 1968. At the time this was the station that UK teenagers were listening to under the sheets at night because it was playing the great pop music of the day: music which the dinosaur BBC of the time refused to play. And down in distant South Africa we were listening to.
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