Chief Business Correspondent for the International Herald Tribune.
European regulators approved a bailout over the weekend, but with controversial conditions. They decided to make bank depositors in the politically troubled Mediterranean Island nation to pay for part of a $13 billion bailout.
The International Monetary Fund has a new managing director. Her name is Christine Lagarde, and she is the first woman to head the IMF, taking over for Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Her reign begins with some obstacles, namely Greece on the brink of defaulting.
In discussing the troubled Greek economy's effect on U.S. markets, Standard & Poor's equity market strategist Alec Young told the AP that "There’s no easy answers or they would have found them by now. We’re recommending that clients continue to expect volatility in the U.S. market as a result of the news coming out of Greece." The length and depth of that volatility remains to be seen. In Brussels, European Union leaders scrambled to draft a second bailout on Thursday, coming up with a 12 billion euro plan they hope will avert international disaster. For more on just how big this news is for world financial markets we’re joined by our resident experts Louise Story and Marcus Mabry. Louise Story is the Wall Street and finance reporter for our partner The New York Times and Marcus Mabry is editor-at-large of the International Herald Tribune.
New York Police boarded an Air France plane as it waited for takeoff at JFK this Saturday and took French economist Dominique Strauss Kahn into custody. The 62-year-old man was the head of the International Monetary Fund and until Saturday, was considered the likely candidate to challenge Nicholas Sarkozy in France’s 2012 elections. By Sunday, Strauss-Kahn was standing in a Manhattan court, in front of a crowd of tabloid reporters. The incident has caused a "political earthquake" as the IMF — and the French Socialist Party — struggle to replace him.