no lucky man

ECB QE = 1 Trillion Euros Greek problems = peanuts

Citibank. You will probably have to pay for it, but then most accounts on the continent have charges anyway, so there's no real difference.

I'm not sure that your age is really an issue, but you will need time (2/3 years from my experience). Personally I find German a very tricky language. I have learned quite a bit, but you will need to be pretty comfortable with grammatical terms as German is a minefield in this respect. Here are the 2 main things I find difficult; I believe these are common problems: 1. German has 3 genders, but it doesn't just stop with der,die and das. Depending on the 'case' of the sentence, the equivalent word for 'the' will be a choice of many. 2. Word order is oftten inversed, putting the verb at the end of the sentence. This obviously makes it hard to process. As a simple example: 'I cannot find the key' would translate as 'I cannot the key find' I know some people who find it a simple language to learn, but it's not something I hear often. The major factor as always in helping you get fluent in German (both speaking and understanding) would be the ability to practise. Usually this entails living in a German speaking country for some time. Nothing beats this experience, which will help your language skills, as well as giving you experience of this country and its culture. I have lived in Germany and thoroughly loved it, but one thing you will immediately notice is the quality of the English spoken by alot of Germans, and this obviously poses a problem for you too.

It's a Zero Hedge article, but one that is fairly short and sweet and is followed up by some sensible comment. As of this morning, it hasn't yet been overrun by the usual array of tinned food and shotgun hoarders... Zero Hedge - Shadow Banking Liabilities

I would imagine this is due to the enormous Chinese stimulus package more than anything else. I'm sure you are all aware of this, but have a read of Hugh Hendry's stuff as it is littered all over the www. He's convinced it's a humoungous bubble waitng to end in nasty ways.

It sounds to me like you need to buy an option (you can do this through a spread betting firm). A forward FX contract will be based off of the current 'spot' level and the price difference will be due to an adjustment that is made for the interest rate differential. A forward FX contract is not a prediction of where the 'spot' rate will be at that particular time in the future as it will actually be priced off of the current market rate, give or take a few pips. I hope that makes sense...

It looks like this story is gaining some traction. 2 year plus warranties for goods... http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/victoriaderbysh...islation_y.html

I only saw this story for the first time yesterday evening on the BBC, so I may have missed many posts in the past that have discussed this subject. Are there any other threads running out there on this further shameful story regarding MP's expenses? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8074351.stm