That might allow further interest-rate cuts, opening the prospect of more jobs for voters.

ECONOMIST: Brazil

An interest-rate gap is opening between currencies like the dollar and the yen on the one hand, where monetary policy is likely to remain ultra-loose, and higher-yielding ones like the euro on the other.

ECONOMIST: Currencies

Rankin and Trent Johnston were bowling highly-disciplined opening spells to well-organised fields and, with the Sri Lankans failing to lift the run-rate above four-an-over, Ireland were rewarded with the wicket of Sangakkara.

BBC: Sri Lanka see off valiant Ireland

More profound than the foreign threat, according to Sheng Hong, a reformist economist at the Unirule Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, would be the opening of Chinese banking to domestic competition, through interest-rate liberalisation.

ECONOMIST: Problems left over from history | The

Having seized the initiative, England's openers took on the new ball and scored at a rate that would have been satisfying in the opening overs of a one-day international.

BBC: In the end, what was all the fuss about?