The recent appearance of China as potential saviour of the Eurozone is put in doubt by Francois Godement at the European Council of Foreign Relations.

Asserting political conditions in return for help is a risky game to play for China but Europe may not be united enough to withstand it, argues Godement.

The Turkey-versus-Hungary comparison is perhaps the starkest example of the macroeconomic contrasts within the EEMEA region and also of the different policy responses of the respective central banks, writes Christian Keller of Barclays Capital.

Financial Times blogs, 24 August, 2011

Like Saint-Tropez, many municipalities across Europe are saddled with loans carrying variable interest rates pegged to fluctuations in the Swiss franc, other foreign currencies or various commodity prices.

Jittery investors have been turning en masse to the Swiss franc and other assets deemed as safe havens amid growing concerns over sputtering economic growth in the U.S. and Europe.

There are two big reasons to think austerity will not work in 2011 the way it did in 1919 and 1945, writes James Macdonald in Foreign Policy.

Foreign Policy, 18 August, 2011

As the U.S. bond rating falls and the stock market plunges, the American Century looks to be well and truly over. While this has provoked no small amount of hand-wringing, Americans may soon come to enjoy no longer bearing the responsibility for running the world's indispensable nation.

Three Cheers for Decline - by Charles Kenny
Foreign Policy August 9, 2011

Fears of a double-dip recession are growing following turmoil on the stock markets and Standard & Poor's downgrade of the US. In a SPIEGEL interview, Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff criticizes President Obama for giving in to the Tea Party in the debt-ceiling negotiations and argues that the euro zone has to become a transfer union.

Der Spiegel, 8 August, 2011

Economically, China is already a dynamic giant. Militarily, it is becoming one. Politically? Ah, that's another story..

Timothy Garton Ash
The Guardian, June 23 2011

In October 2010 Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega warned of an impending “currency war”. The United States, Britain, Switzerland and Japan, Mantega complained, were all simultaneously attempting to push down their currencies in an effort to export their way out of their economic doldrums. Their policies were in obvious conflict, since not every country can weaken its exchange rate against the others. This was a zero-sum game that could only come to grief.

5 ways in which the eurozone tensions have manifested themselves in 2010 by STEPHEN FIDLER

The Wall Street Journal, December 24, 2010