Image of the week: Yellen meets Lagarde
In pictorial evidence that more than one woman can stalk the conference rooms of global power without the world imploding, US Federal Reserve chairman Janet Yellen bumps into International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde during the opening session of a G20 event in Sydney this week.
Lagarde later told Bloomberg TV that Yellen had given her a lift to the meeting. "I came with her," she said, going on to describe Yellen as a "very talented, very competent, very friendly woman who I greatly respect and admire". Oh yes, and she is a "demanding, thorough, rigorous" and "also very humane and very attentive person". The Fed chairman is now going to take time out to prepare her list of return compliments. Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters
In numbers: All about jobs
12.1%
Percentage unemployment rate in Ireland, which Enda Kenny has hailed as moving towards the EU norm. (The euro zone average rate is 12 per cent, and in the EU, it's 10.7 per cent.)
25%
Percentage unemployment rates in both Spain and Greece exceed this level, thereby dragging up European averages and making them rather modest targets.
19m
Here is that 12 per cent expressed in human terms, as this is the number of people who are out of work across the euro zone, according to the latest available Eurostat data.
The lexicon: Scottish Broadcasting Service
"Yes" campaigners in the Scottish independence referendum have proposed that if the nation breaks free of the UK, it will also cut its ties with the BBC and establish the Scottish Broadcasting Service – a new "Auntie". This week, Maria Miller, UK culture secretary, insisted that this was more than just a proposal – an independent Scotland would definitely "lose" the BBC.
Given that a Scottish Broadcasting Service would have the best part of a century of catching up to do on the "much-loved brand" score, this hard talk would seem to be a canny way to boost the "no" vote. Presumably the Scottish people would figure out a way to pick up the BBC for free, though. After all, this is the nation that produced the great John Logie Baird, the scientist and engineer who invented television in the first place.
Getting to know: John Lefevre
The @GSElevator Twitter account, which purported to document comments overheard in the elevators of Goldman Sachs, has been keeping more than 600,000 followers amused for years with tweets such as "in life, as in sports, the boos always come from the cheap seats", "Groupon . . . food stamps for the middle class" and "Sure, I'll have a $6 bottle of Evian with a glass full of ice made from tap water". It wasn't all jokes. So convincing were @GSElevator's insider references to Wall Street deals that the account sparked an internal inquiry at Goldman Sachs to find the rogue "eavesdropper". But it was never able to uncover his identity, because he doesn't work there and he never did. Unmasked by the New York Times, John Lefevre is a 34-year-old former bond executive, ex-Citigroup, who lives in Texas. A book is on its way.
