LAURA SLATTERYlooks back at the week in business
Commodity Watch
Gold has struck a succession of new all-time highs recently, coming close to the $1,300 (€974) per oz threshold. To put this in perspective, in 2000, gold was trading at less than $300 per oz, while in 2005, it was less than $450 per oz.
While all of this is good news for “cash for gold” traders and bad news for jewellery buyers, the more serious aspect of the precipitous rise in gold prices is the extent to which it reflects a speculative bubble or a genuine reflection of the rampant uncertainty marring the outlook for the global economy.
Gold is commonly referred to as a “safe haven”: when investors pile into gold, it means they’re terribly jittery about the prospects of everything else. By that logic, when confidence does return, gold prices could collapse faster than you can say “you spent how much on my engagement ring?”
Dictionary Corner: QE2
No cruise liners here, just shorthand for another indicator of the malaise that continues to affect the world economy. QE2 refers to Quantitative Easing: the Sequel.
Quantitative easing, according to the standard crude metaphor, is the laxative pill designed to unclog credit markets that are clenched too tightly for economic activity to, um, flow. All eyes are now trained on the Federal Reserve to see if it will make further large-scale asset purchases in order to pump support into the US economy, where the recovery is faltering too much for most people’s liking.
After $300 billion in central bank asset purchases in 2009, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke gave the tiniest of hints on Tuesday that he was considering QE2, aka QEII.
Status update
Obese sailors:Pim de Lange, the Dutch boss of Stena Line, has had to apologise after he was quoted saying his British workers were "quite fat and covered in tattoos".
Miracle cash:The head of the Vatican Bank is being investigated in a money-laundering inquiry by Italian authorities. The Vatican says it is "perplexed and astonished".
Biting bugs:An infestation of bed bugs in New York forced the temporary closure of Nikes flagship Niketown store in Manhattan on Monday.
$8.9 billion
Profit that the global airline industry will make this year, according to the International Air Traffic Association. In March, it forecast losses of $2.8 billion.
"I personally would like to think that I would have a job in financial services. I have a five-year-old daughter who I would like to get to college."
– EBS chief executive Fergus Murphy looks to the future.
The Question
Is it a good idea to broadcast your pay woes on air?
It’s not often we see a real-time deliberation of whether doing a particular job is worth the money, but viewers got the chance to witness snooker star Ronnie O’Sullivan doing so on Monday.
With the balls attractively enough dispersed for O’Sullivan to contemplate a maximum 147 break as soon as he potted the first red and black, he asked referee Jan Verhaas to check what the “max prize” was. Sadly, Verhaas discovered there was no 147 prize, just €4,000 for the highest tournament break. “He pulled a face, didn’t he,” exclaimed bemused commentator John Virgo, who suggested “a whip round if he gets it”.
He did get it, but controversially had to be persuaded by Verhaas to finish off the final black.
There must have been something in the air though, because on Wednesday, BBC Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles raised the thorny issue of salary arrears. “I haven’t been paid since the end of July and no one cares about it . . . Why should I bother? If they can’t be bothered, why should I bother? Just get it fixed. It’s a huge lack of respect to me”
Neither O’Sullivan nor Moyles elicited much sympathy – O’Sullivan was accused of unsportsmanlike behaviour and Moyles of washing his dirty linen in public. Both men are among the top earners in their fields. And yet O’Sullivan’s claim that his actions were “about proving a point, not about the money” has shone attention on the cash-strapped state of the sport of snooker, while Moyles’s woes are ones to which most workers will relate at some point in their careers.
