Articles marked with this icon are only printed in the UK edition of The Economist. Brazil's Itaú and Unibanco have agreed to merge, creating Latin America's largest bank and one of the largest in the world.
Giving credit where it is due
The failure of another major bank will still put pressure on the system, but the CDS market will not be alone. Think back to the crash of 1987 when fingers were pointed at the stock futures market, which institutions used to hedge against declines in their stock portfolios.
Green, easy and wrong
Germany's generous solar subsidies blanketed the roofs of one of the world's sunniest countries with solar cells, driving up the price of silicon and reducing the cost-effectiveness of solar energy in places where it actually makes sense. The facile notion that there is a single solution to the world's economic and climate problems is therefore a dangerous one.
Call it off
So far, the only clear advantage of the deal for consumers is the knowledge that HBOS will not fail – and this is something that is now covered by the government's new bailout arrangements. It is a shame that the offer was not referred, as the OFT requested, to the Competition Commission for further study.
After the fiesta
And as foreign investment goes elsewhere, Zapatero needs to sell his country more aggressively abroad. In his first term, the main initiative of Mr. Zapatero was a decent but nebulous "Alliance of Civilizations".
The right side of the argument
You also wrote that "most experts" consider survey weighting "sloppy" to compensate for sampling biases. In light of the global economic downturn, Central America is likely to suffer from a drastic decrease in direct investment from companies in the United States, as well as a drop in demand for its exports.
Obama's world
Obama's cautious response to the war in Georgia suggests he hasn't made up his mind yet. Mr Obama will also take office at a time of great change in the basic world order.
Wolves at the door
Against this background, Mr. Obama faces three different but related challenges: the financial crisis, mortgage and foreclosures, and recession. Obama's preparations have been extensive, and George Bush himself has prepared the ground for a smooth handover.
Signed, sealed, delivered
Almost one in five voters who voted for Mr Bush four years ago have switched to Mr Obama. Half of the voters said they believed Mr. McCain the policy of mr. Bush as president will continue - and 90% of those voted for Mr. Obama vote.
Confetti and hot dates
Scenes from a wake
Happy days for Democrats
The other woman replies that Mrs. Dole is 92 years old, she voted with George Bush 92% of the time. In Oregon, Gordon Smith, a centrist distantly related to the Udalls, though on the other side of the aisle, was a little behind.
No time for a novice
Palin for 2012!
Dispatches from the culture wars
Down at the bottom
The unhappy warrior
Mr. McCain's various problems, temperamental and circumstantial, found their perfect expression in the worst decision of the 2008 election season -- his choice of Ms. Palin as his running mate. Mr. McCain barely knew when he made his fateful decision (supposedly he wanted centrists like Joe Lieberman or Michael Bloomberg, but his advisers talked him out of it).
The credit crunch reaches Brazil Inc
The financial turmoil "accelerated" the talks, according to Roberto Setúbal, Itaú's chief executive, who will hold the same post at the merged bank. The government has taken advantage of the favorable conditions of recent years to improve its finances.
Non grata
Hola, Luther
Resisting China's charm offensive
Continuing the question of Taiwan's status, he has described its ties with China as "special relations between two regions". This week, Lai Shin-yuan, of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Advisory Council, said she had urged Mr. Chen in a closed-door meeting to remove China's military threat.
There be dragons
Britain's suzerain remedy
The ghost of wartimes past
Mr Aso also avoided visiting Yasukuni, where war criminals and 2.5 million Japanese war dead are kept. The public response to the affair confirms how burdened Japan's history deniers are today, says Jeffrey Kingston, an Asian historian at Temple University in Tokyo.
The nice side of democracy
Predator and prey
A Western military official believes the army is faring worse in Swat, where militants are holding their ground. But Western generals are increasingly placing the blame for the Taliban's resilience on Pakistan's tribal areas and the refuges, supply bases and recruitment areas they provide.
Barracking
Enter Najib, with baggage
Murder, muddle and panic
Maus-usar itan dagitoy kas proxy kontra iti National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) ni Heneral Nkunda. Ti pannakapaay ni Mr. Kabila a mangwayawaya iti makindaya a Congo manipud kadagiti mangikisap iti puli a Hutu ti nangpabileg iti marka ni Heneral Nkunda a Tutsi extremism.
A new party
Jet-setting to business as usual
After all, this is one of Africa's worst regimes, with an abysmal human rights record and a life expectancy under 50. Wall Street and the City of London seem a long way from Maputo, and optimists hope this distance could result in the Africa Advantage.
Caught in the middle but still perky
Yet they have continued to show kindness, to the point that last year they invited Iran's controversial president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on a pilgrimage to Mecca and to attend the GCC's annual summit. For all his kind words in Tehran, Mr. Attiya recently compared the Iranian occupation of the three Gulf islands claimed by the UAE to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.
Getting Medvedev's message
Medvedev also enjoyed the full power of Russia's bureaucratic and media machine en route to the top job. Medvedev said the government should be made more accountable to parliament, for example.
Fog in the Baltic
A mess in Hesse
The break-up danger
We have to isolate these people from their constituents,” says a diplomat with plenty of gory details at his disposal.
Gender-benders
Russian lessons
At least such arguments reveal something important: that the hype about the EU's soft diplomacy is not believed by those who practice it. And in the interest of preserving long-term unity (Europe's strength), the EU will now back down, unanimously.
How deep and how long?
One reason is that the economy has been spared the wild GDP growth that preceded the downturn of the mid-1970s and early 1990s. A cut in bank lending to businesses worsened the recession of the early 1990s, and by the mid-1970s there was a serious, if largely hidden, banking crisis.
Third-runway blues
Reshaping the landscape
Birdie or bogey?
Mix and match
Limits to growth
Broadcasting uncertainty
No, you can't
The problem with this analogy is not just that Mr. Brown is a droning killjoy and Mr. Obama is not. An additional hope of the Brownites is that Obama's accession will somehow strengthen their man's international status.
Lump together and like it
This little-known city in the Pearl River Delta makes 30% of the magnetic recording heads used in hard drives around the world and 16% of the world's electronic keyboards. This is made possible by an extraordinary fragmentation of production: every step in the production line is broken down.
The morning after
For most of the last decade Spain has been responsible for the creation of about one in three new jobs in the eurozone. The symptoms are a current account deficit that exceeded 10% of GDP in the first half of this year and an inflation rate that has been about one percentage point higher than the euro area average for most of the decade. passed.
Zapatero's gambits
It also encouraged a new generation - the grandchildren of those who fought in the war - to organize civilian groups that began to search for and dig up the graves. The government allowed the "Patriotic Left" party (an Orwellian term used to describe political sympathizers of ETA) to participate in municipal elections in 2007 and won 7.4% of the vote in the three Basque provinces.
How much is enough?
In parts of the Basque Country, in the narrow rural valleys bordering Vizcaya and Guipuzcoa, non-nationalists cannot campaign freely. Although it lacked money and access to the media, it won 1.2% of the vote in the March elections, the same as the PNV.
Banks, bricks and mortar
After the frenetic consolidation of the early 1990s, Spain is left with two giant banks, Santander and BBVA. Mr Sáenz expects this figure to remain in the double digits, but this will require cost savings, including early retirement of some of the bank's staff.
In search of a new economy
Problems in the labor market also bear part of the blame for Spain's low productivity. Many of the steps needed to make the economy more efficient are outlined in the government's 2005 National Reform Plan, but Mr Zapatero's opponents claim he has been slow to implement this.
A cooler welcome
The Spanish legion
Mr Entrecanales staged a raid in which he bought 26% of the shares in Endesa, the Spanish electricity giant. Mr. Entrecanales insists he was motivated by business considerations, not politics: “It was a political battle in which I was in the middle.” The deal was certainly a good one.
The perils of parochialism
In the past few years, Spain's political leaders have chosen to look back and emphasize the local issues that divide them. For the first time since Ortega invented his analysis, Europe is not an automatic – and relatively painless – solution to Spain's problems.
Sources and acknowledgments
Offer to readers
Gathering clouds
Investing in dirtier power sources carries its own risks, he adds, as illustrated by the recent seesaw in the price of fossil fuels. Many luminaries, from the head of the United Nations Environment Program to Barack Obama, the president-elect of the United States, tout the industry as a means of both addressing global warming and stimulating the declining Western economies.
Criss-crossed capitalism
A divestment of cross-holdings by J-Power, the former state-owned energy giant, was one of the demands of the Children's Investment Fund (TCI), which took a 9.9% stake in the company from 2005. Japanese executives say cross-ownership is an aspect of their business culture , that will persist no matter how much foreigners protest.
Icons no more
Trains v planes
Oh, grow up
Losing face
Raging bull
Its third-quarter results, published on November 6, were disappointing, largely due to the lack of opportunities to sell companies in its portfolio due to the freeze in financial markets. Blackstone made some big trades at the top of the market, but quickly threw most of the riskiest ones to other investors.
The great untangling
Being rated AAA, AIG was able to post modest margin requirements - the deposit it had to pay against the risk of entering into the contract. Marketers hope to get them done with a series of initiatives, which have recently been boosted by the Federal Reserve.
All fall down
Bank loans to non-financial businesses rose 12.1% in the year to September, slower than a few months ago but still a reasonable clip. The message from the latest business surveys is that jobs as well as investment spending are in the firing line.
Smouldering
Cry freedom
Never missing a trick, Deutsche Bank said last month it had also started using the less stringent rules, which allowed it to avoid write-downs of around €845 million in the third quarter. Supporters of the new rules argue that mark-to-market accounting has forced banks into a vicious spiral of forced sales and more losses.
Well prepared
Clare and present danger
Stock markets may not be at their cheapest ever, but they are discounting an awful lot of bad news. Long periods of poor performance are followed by periods of good performance and vice versa.
Traffic duty
Undergoing repair
The global slumpometer
Still, some economists think the IMF's 3 percent benchmark for a global recession may be too high. Using the IMF definition (ie growth below 3%), the global economy has been in recession for no fewer than 11 of the last 28 years.
Award: Philip Coggan
Golden slingshot
These particles are injected directly into the target tumor, rather than relying on the leaky walls of tumor capillaries to get them to the right place. With natural TNF, this does not matter, as the substance is only produced in the tumor itself.
Is it plane?
Such land modification is particularly severe in the tropics, where most of the world's species live. As reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they conducted the research in the Western Ghats, a mountain range in southwestern India.
United we fall
Larger-than-life diplomacy
As Mr. Ottaway records, the prince virtually became part of the government and was able to enter the White House. Although Mr. Ottaway is reluctant to write the prince's political obituary, this is a story with clear elements of decline and fall.
The vertigo years
But in his enthusiasm for showing the shock of the new, Mr. Blom risks overlooking the fact that the previous century left a solid legacy. This should not deter the reader from enjoying Mr. Blom's impressive and thought-provoking book.
An earlier envoy
Guns 'n' berets
Mercy mission
Spit and crayons
Studs Terkel
Even his childhood was narrated by voices, gently crackling from the crystal set or booming from the radio as he sat inside listening, even in the summer. Mastoiditis hurt his bandaged ears, but still he approached the street crowd.
Overview
Output, prices and jobs
Trade, exchange rates, budget balances and interest rates
Investment-banking deals
