Spain

Deflation terrifies economists because once it starts, they have no idea what to do about it. When demand in an economy shrinks, companies cut jobs, and with fewer employed demand shrinks even more. The deflationary spiral is self-reinforcing. Central banks can cut interest rates to near zero and slosh money around like drunken lottery winners, but once hope flickers and dies, there is nothing they can do to persuade anyone to invest in the economy. Deflation took hold in Japan in the early 1990s and despite the government straining every sinew, its economy is still ailing 20 years on. Europe is right, then, to be in a panic. Inflation across

Continuing last week’s theme, it was the Italian banks — with nine fails, four still requiring capital injections — that bagged the booby prize in the great EU stress-testing exercise, followed predictably by Greece and Cyprus, while Germany and Austria (with one fail each) fared better than some of us had feared. The most delinquent European bank turned out to be the most ancient, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which was judged to have a capital shortfall of €2.1 billion as a result of a very modern set of problems. Founded in 1472 as a kind of charitable pawnbroker, the bank which eventually became Italy’s third largest had a

Ebola clinics in many parts of West Africa are full, so more and more people are being told to stay at home and take Paracetamol and fluids if they become infected. It means if someone in your family gets Ebola, you all have to stay in the house, which is effectively a death sentence. At the moment, the disease is killing 70 per cent of the people it infects, but that’s likely to go up. People who need other medical treatment can’t get it, and in Sierra Leone 40 per cent of farmland has been abandoned. Western governments are building secure military encampments for health workers, fearing civil unrest and

[UPDATE: The dog is now dead, WSJ reports.] For anyone concerned about Spain’s ability to contain Ebola, after a Spanish nurse’s aide tested positive for the virus, fear not: Madrid’s regional government plans to euthanize the infected woman’s pet dog in the interest of combatting contagion. The dog, a 12-year-old mutt named Excalibur, shows no sign of infection, and it’s unclear whether the disease even can be transmitted from dogs to humans. A 2005 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that ‘dogs might be asymptomatically infected by Ebola virus,’ and that during Gabon’s 2001-02 outbreak, ‘several dogs were highly exposed to Ebola virus by eating infected dead animals.’ ‘We cannot

It is a wicked thing to revel in someone else’s misery. Trouble is, occasionally it can’t be helped. So – bye, bye Spain! I think I would have traded England winning tonight (and therefore prolonging the agony) for Spain’s magnificently rapid exit from this world cup. Oh, Chile – you brave sons of Pinochet and Allende! Whichever you prefer – who cares? It is the more civilised parts of Latin America which have shone in this world cup – Chile themselves and Costa Rica. Brazil struggled and have been, uh, “fortunate”, Argentina looked distrait, Uruguay simply incompetent (though that opinion may need to be revised later); Mexico, the world’s great

You see – that’s the trouble. You write off the World Cup for moral reasons because of FIFA sleaze (and that opening game). And then Spain are magnificently humiliated, cheering me up more than I could have thought possible. Undoubtedly talented, Spain have nonetheless been boring us rigid for too long, with that self-regarding, tippy tappy, stifling of what the game should really be about. The Netherlands taught them that, with great glee. I haven’t been so pleased about a world cup result for ages – well, not since the French fell to bits against Mexico and South Africa. You sort of hope this is the end of an era,