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(Dmitry Astahov/AFP/Getty Images)

Vladimir Putin reportedly wanted to hang President Saakashvili “like the Americans hanged Saddam”

Nicolas Sarkozy saved the President of Georgia from being hanged “by the balls” - a threat made last summer by Vladimir Putin, according to an account that emerged yesterday from the Élysée Palace.

The Russian Prime Minister had revealed his plans for disposing of Mr Saakashvili when Mr Sarkozy was in Moscow in August to broker a ceasefire in Georgia.

Jean-David Levitte, Mr Sarkozy’s chief diplomatic adviser, reported the exchange in a news magazine before an EU-Russia summit today. The meeting will be chaired by the French leader and President Medvedev.

With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia’s Government. According to Mr Levitte, the Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin declared.

Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. “Hang him?” - he asked. “Why not?” Mr Putin replied. “The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein.”

Mr Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: “Yes but do you want to end up like [President] Bush?” Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: “Ah - you have scored a point there.”

Mr Saakashvili, who was in Paris to meet Mr Sarkozy yesterday, laughed nervously when a French radio station read him the exchange. “I knew about this scene, but not all the details. It’s funny, all the same,” he said.

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Tags: France, Georgia, Government, Mikhail Saakashvili, Nicolas Sarkozy, Politics, Russia, Vladimir Putin

Canadian radio comedian persuades Republican vice-presidential hopeful he is French leader in prank phone call

Perhaps Sarah Palin should have realised something was amiss when the caller purporting to be France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, referred to “my special American adviser, Johnny Halliday”.

Later in the call, maybe, she could have guessed that even the real Sarkozy would be unlikely to refer to his wife, Carla Bruni, as “so hot in bed” or talk about a supposed mutual love of hunting by saying “to take away a life, that is so fun”.

The would-be vice president was, of course, speaking to Canadian comedian Marc-Antoine Audette, part of a radio duo who have made prank calls to a series of world leaders over the years.

Palin didn’t give away anything of real note - except perhaps an ambition to be president herself “maybe in eight years” - or suffer any real embarrassments.

It is interesting, however, to hear Palin’s eager tone of voice and exaggerated politeness (”We love you! Thanks you for talking to me!”) which seemed to go beyond courtesy into sheer fandom.

Maybe Palin - like many others - still can’t believe the position she’s in right now.

Peter Walker
Sunday November 02 2008 10.05 GMT

Source: The Guardian

Tags: election, Funny, Government, Nicolas Sarkozy, Politics, Sarah Palin, U.S.

Sarkozy wants top EU economy team

Mr Sarkozy is steering the EU presidency until January

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for a European “economic government” to ensure a more united EU response to financial turmoil.

The leaders of the 15-nation eurozone should co-ordinate their actions with the European Central Bank, he said.

Meanwhile the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said Europe should weather the worst of the turmoil thanks to the EU’s “crisis management” measures.

However, the IMF predicts eurozone growth will slow to 0.2% next year.

That compares with a predicted rate of 1.3% this year and 1.4% in 2010.

In its latest assessment, the IMF forecasts that the Irish Republic and Italy will prove to be in recession already, with growth figures for 2008 of -1.8% and -0.1% respectively.

Both would remain in recession next year, with Spain joining them.

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Tags: ECB, Economy, EU, Government, IMF, New World Order, Nicolas Sarkozy, Politics, Recession

Major industrialised economies will suffer the worst slump since the 1930s, according to new research from Deutsche Bank.

Worst slump since Great Depression: Bud Fields and his family in their home during the Great Depression in Alabama, 1935. Photo: Corbis

The warning underlines the fact that policymakers have failed to prevent the financial crisis from turning into a full-blown economic slump. It comes as world leaders agreed to hold a summit in New York billed as the “Bretton Woods meeting for the 21st century”.

In its major assessment of the global economy’s health, Deutsche Bank also warned that Britain is even more vulnerable than the US or the euro area, as it predicted that the powerhouses of India and China would fail to support the wider global economy through the downturn.

The banks’ economists Thomas Mayer and Peter Hooper said: “We now expect a major recession for the world economy over the year ahead, with growth in the industrial countries falling to its lowest level since the Great Depression and global growth falling to 1.2pc, its lowest level since the severe downturn of the early 1980s.”

According to the International Monetary Fund, global growth of anything less than 3pc constitutes a world recession. The warning was echoed by Richard Berner of Morgan Stanley, who said: “A global recession is now under way, and risks are still pointed to the downside for commodity prices and earnings.”

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Tags: bailout, Canada, China, Depression, Deutsche Bank, Economy, Fed, Federal Reserve, France, George Bush, Germany, Government, IMF, India, Italy, Nicolas Sarkozy, Politics, Recession, Russia, U.K., U.N.

Christine Lagarde, the French finance minister, warned her US counterpart Hank Paulson that he had to bail out US investment bank Lehman Brothers or face global financial collapse, but her advice went unheeded.

Christine Lagarde, the French finance minister, warned her US counterpart Hank Paulson that he must bail out US investment bank Lehman Brothers or face global financial collapse, but her advice went unheeded. Photo: Reuters

Sources close to Mrs Lagarde said that she had called the US Treasury Secretary - a close personal friend - well before the ailing bank’s collapse imploring him to act, but he chose not to.

Lehman Brothers’ demise sparked the biggest shake-up on Wall Street in decades and sent shock waves around the world that triggered a massive bailout plan in Britain and Europe.

Mrs Lagarde - attributed with playing a key role in brokering a bailout deal among G7 finance ministers in Washington last weekend - dubbed Mr Paulson’s decision to let the bank go under “horrendous” as it triggered panic in markets and banks to the brink of a 1929-style financial meltdown.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, she warned that the world’s hedge funds could be the next institutions to be hit by the financial turmoil.

Mrs Lagarde, a perfect English speaker, said that governments must be “vigilant” over the health of hedge funds. “Initially everybody thought the hedge fund sector would be the first one to actually cause the collapse. They are vastly unregulated, they have been operating at the fringes, at the margin, and we need to be careful that there is no contamination effect,” she said.

Related articles:
- Hedge funds shake in the teeth of financial storm
- US hedge funds suffer heavy withdrawals

Her warning will send a shiver through the $2 trillion (£1.15billion) hedge fund industry, which has doubled in size in the last three years and proved to be one of the most powerful forces in the global financial system.

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Tags: bailout, Credit Crisis, credit crunch, Economy, EU, financial crisis, France, G7, Government, hedge funds, Henry Paulson, Jean-Claude Juncker, Lehman Brothers, Meltdown, Nicolas Sarkozy, Politics, Stock Market, Treasury, Trichet, U.K., U.S., Wall Street

Here is an update on the size of the derivatives market with the latest official figures (.pdf) from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Hold your breath, as we are not anymore talking paltry billions but TRILLIONS of whichever fiat currency.

Current emergency meetings on banks and markets are still only in the stage where politicians and central bankers are bickering over how to create a few more hundred billions Euros and FRNs. But toxic MBS pale in comparison to the mushrooming growth of the derivatives market. According to figures released in the quarterly review of the BIS (pp A103) in September the total notional amount of outstanding derivatives in all categories rose 15% to a mindboggling $596 TRILLION as of December 2007.

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Tags: Angela Merkel, BIS, Credit Crisis, credit crunch, Derivatives, Derivatives market, Economy, financial crisis, GDP, Nicolas Sarkozy, Silvio Berlusconi, Stock Market, U.S.

Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) — France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Austria committed 1.3 trillion euros ($1.8 trillion) to guarantee bank loans and take stakes in lenders, racing to prevent the collapse of the financial system.

The announcements came as Britain took majority stakes today in Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and HBOS Plc. The coordinated steps followed a pledge yesterday by European leaders to bolster market confidence as the global economy slides toward recession.

“What it should do is stabilize the banking system,” said Peter Hahn, a fellow at London’s Cass Business School and former managing director at Citigroup Inc. “Will it stop us from having a recession? No, nothing is going to stop us from having a recession.”

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Tags: Angela Merkel, Austria, bailout, Banks, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Credit Crisis, credit crunch, debt, Economy, EU, France, GDP, Germany, Gordon Brown, HBoS, Holland, mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Nicolas Sarkozy, Politics, RBS, Recession, Spain, Stock Market, Wall Street

BERLIN: Only the state can restore trust to financial markets now, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was quoted as saying on Sunday amid reports that Berlin was about to unveil a huge rescue package for its banks.

“Only action by the state is capable of restoring the necessary trust,” Merkel was quoted as saying by the Bild am Sonntag weekly following talks on Saturday in France with President Nicolas Sarkozy.

“In this it is important that countries do not act unilaterally but that we coordinate at European and international level and then implement the measures within our national responsibilities,” Merkel said.

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Tags: Angela Merkel, Banks, Deutsche Bank, Economy, financial crisis, France, Germany, Government, Nicolas Sarkozy, Politics

Strauss-Kahn said rich nations had so far failed to restore confidence

The world financial system is teetering on the “brink of systemic meltdown”, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned in Washington.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn said rich nations had so far failed to restore confidence, but he endorsed a new action plan by the G7 group.

He also said the IMF was ready to lend to countries in dire need of capital.

The 15 eurozone leaders will meet in Paris later to try to establish a common approach to the markets crisis.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said they would present a number of proposals at the summit to ease the credit freeze that has caused the collapse of several leading international banks.

But after meeting in Paris on Saturday, the two leaders said the summit would not result in a joint financial rescue fund for Europe, in the model of a $700bn rescue by the US government.

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Tags: Angela Merkel, Banks, Economy, financial crisis, G7, George Bush, Gordon Brown, Government, IMF, Meltdown, Nicolas Sarkozy, Politics, Stock Market, U.K., U.S.

The son of a former French president, an Israeli-Russian billionaire and a tycoon with ties to Arizona’s jet set were among the headliners yesterday as 42 defendants went on trial in Paris, accused in a worldwide web of trafficked arms to Angola, money laundering and kickbacks.

Defense lawyers and Angola’s government are trying to stop the show, however, arguing the trial has no right to go on.

Prosecutors allege that between 1993 and 1998, two key suspects - French magnate Pierre Falcone, a longtime resident of Scottsdale, Arizona, and Arkady Gaydamak, an Israeli businessman based in France at the time - organized a total of $791 million in Russian arms sales to Angola, a breach of French government rules.

Most of the other suspects are accused of receiving money or gifts, undeclared to tax authorities, from a company run by Falcone in exchange for political or commercial favors. Investigators say the corruption grew into a tangle of laundered money and parallel diplomacy that left a stain on France’s relations with Africa.

Among the defendants who filed into a Paris courthouse Monday were icons of France’s political elite - including late President Francois Mitterrand’s eldest son, Jean-Christophe, and an economic adviser to current President Nicolas Sarkozy, Jacques Attali.

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Tags: Angola, France, Law, Nicolas Sarkozy, Society