By Gideon Rachman
The old is dying and the new cannot be born: in the interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms will appear.” That statement from the Prison Notebooks of the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci was a favourite of student Marxists when I was at university in the 1980s. Back then it struck me as portentous nonsense. But Gramsci’s observation does resonate now – in an age of ideological confusion.
Which way forward? Photo: Getty
Welcome to our first eurozone live blog of 2012. By John Aglionby, Tom Burgis and Esther Bintliff on the news desk in London with contributions from correspondents around the world. All times are GMT.
It may be a new year but it’s the same old eurozone crisis. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel held a bilateral summit in Berlin this morning.
By Gideon Rachman
Efforts to rescue the world economy in 2012 will be afflicted by a perilous political paradox. The more that international co-operation is needed, the harder it will be to achieve.
By Gideon Rachman
It has been many centuries since the Mediterranean Sea was the centre of civilisation. But in 2011 the Med was back – not just as a holiday destination – but at the very centre of world affairs. This was a year of global indignation, from the Occupy Wall Street movement to the Moscow election protests and China’s village revolts. It was popular protests on either side of the Mediterranean – in Tahrir Square in Cairo and Syntagma Square in Athens – that set the tone for 2011.
The eurozone after Cameron’s veto, and the Durban climate talks
Shawn Donnan, Ben Hall and Peter Spiegel discuss the eurozone crisis following Cameron’s treaty veto, while Clive Cookson talks to Pilita Clark about the outcome of the Durban climate change talks.
A fairly extraordinary attack by Christian Noyer, the head of the Bank of France, on the credit-rating agencies and on Britain’s AAA rating seems to confirm what Le Monde was saying last night – a French downgrade is on its way.
It’s all pretty grim, even if you are sitting smugly on the other side of the channel. So it is nice to find something to laugh at. This comment from Tom K beneath the FT’s story on Noyer’s comments, made me laugh: ‘your mother is a ‘amster and your father smells of elderberries’ :-)) I fart in your general direction
life imitates art…
Normally I disapprove of quoting Monty Python. But I think it’s fair enough in this case.
Welcome back to our live coverage of the eurozone crisis. By Tom Burgis and Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura on the newsdesk in London, with contributions from FT correspondents around the world. All times are GMT.
A summit in Brussels ended in deep division, with the UK refusing to back a new treaty for all 27 EU members and leaving the eurozone countries plus at least six others to forge ahead with a pact of their own to enshrine strict new rules on deficits and debt. It was meant to be the summit that would decisively chart a course out of the eurozone’s debt crisis.
19.03 That’s the end of our live coverage today. We’ll leave you with a quick summary of the day’s developments. See FT.com for more news and analysis through the evening.
The British delegation that set off for the European Union summit in Brussels today was in no doubt that it faced a rough ride. The British are being accused of worsening the crisis, by adopting a hardline negotiating position. This is regarded as a little unfair in London. As a senior member of the British delegation puts it – “You can blame Britain for lots of things. But we didn’t invent the euro.”
Welcome back to our live coverage of the eurozone crisis. By Tom Burgis, Esther Bintliff and Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura on the newsdesk in London, with contributions from FT correspondents around the world. All times are GMT.
Europe’s leaders gathered in Brussels for another crunch summit. Expectations are running high for a new grand bargain to restore sanity to the eurozone’s finances and chart a course out of the debt crisis. Also today:
20:15: We’re winding up the liveblog for tonight, but you can follow the rest of the action at FT.com and we’ll be back again on Friday morning. Thanks for reading and for all the comments. Bon courage!
19.54: BREAKING – Peter Spiegel, the FT’s Brussels bureau chief, has this scoop from the summit:
EU leaders have begun their late-starting summit, and they were given a 6-page draft of their conclusions at the start. According to people who have seen it, some of the most interesting new language is on the eurozone bail-out funds.
The current version says the existing €440bn fund, the EFSF, will continue running for another 2 years financing its current programmes – which would not be transferred to the new fund, the €500bn ESM.
That would free up the ESM’s resources, giving the eurozone significantly more firepower, with the two funds running in parallel.
The conclusions say the ESM would have its maximum €500bn lending capacity, regardless of how much the EFSF is committed to.
That could mean as much as €200bn in new “bazooka” weaponry.
Welcome back to our live coverage of the eurozone crisis. By Tom Burgis on the newsdesk in London, with contributions from FT correspondents around the world. All times are GMT.
18.25 That’s the end of our live coverage of the eurozone crisis today. We’ll be back tomorrow morning for a day that includes the ECB rates decision and Mario Draghi’s press conference, as well as the meeting of centre-right European leaders in Marseille ahead of the start of the EU summit in Brussels in the evening. And, just as the leaders tuck in their napkins for a working dinner, the European banking authority will unveil the details of which banks need to raise what capital.
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