Well it must come as something of a relief for any Italian readers we have here at AFOE to learn that UniCredit SpA, Italy’s biggest bank by assets, has definitely NOT incurred losses on the Russian interbank market. Although perhaps I should rephrase that by adding just one extra word: yet. UniCredit has definitely NOT YET incurred (significant) losses on the Russian interbank market. This important piece of information is what we can glean from today’s statement from Unicredit spokesman Marcello Berni to the effect that “We have no losses on the interbank market….The rumors come from a misinterpretation of news that came out today”

The “misinterpretation” - that lead to a 15 cents, or 7.3 percent, drop to 1.85 euros of Unicredit shares in trading today in Milan - was the result of a report from Moscow-based Interfax to the effect that UniCredit was about to sign an agreement with Russia’s central bank to get compensation for losses on interbank operations. The source for the Interfax story was UniCredit Russia Chief Executive Officer Mikhail Alekseyev. But as Marcello Berni points out Alekseyev was referring to possible support the Russian central bank has offered to financial institutions in case of losses on the interbank market, and it should not be read as meaning that such losses had already been incurred, only that Unicredit have hat-tipped the central bank to be readying the money up just in case they do.

The real roots of this problem are to be found in the fact that Unicredit has very substantial exposure to losses in a number of key Central and East European countries, and the Italian government, which already has a debt to GDP ratio of over 100%, is in no position - especially with an economy which looks set to shrink all the way through from here to 2011 - to offer much in the way of cash to support the bank. As I point out in this post, Austria (which is a much smaller country than Italy, but which has similar East European exposure) has already lined up an initial 100 billion euros to support its banks, while the Italian government has remained hesitant to be specific about anything, but seems to be talking about support which only amounts to something like 20 billion euros. So we are left with the rather undignifying spectacle of the leaders of the eurozone’s third largest economy having to rely on Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi and Vladimir Putin for vital support to keep one of Italy’s leading banks alive.

Unicredit used to also be Italy’s leading bank by market value, but since their stock has now declined by 59 percent in the last six months, and the company’s market value stands at 24.7 billion euros ($31.3 billion), it now lies behind Italian rival Intesa Sanpaolo SpA. I repeat, as far as I can see Unicredit currently constitutes the greatest systemic risk to the eurozone banking system, and people somewhere ought to be thinking very carefully about just what the plan ‘B’ is going to be if all this goes horribly wrong.

Here is some interesting reading and debating material for our readers (hat tip Sargasso). Former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt has published an essay through Bertelsmann entitled The Financial Crisis: Three Ways Out for Europe (pdf). Teaser (emphasis mine):

What counts in this new world order is the multiplicity of empires and civilisations, not the dominance of one. What matters is the political stability and economic growth that they can create at a regional level, not for one or other of them to rule the whole world. In a nutshell, this is not about nostalgia for a return to the European empires of old but rather the birth of new types of political organisations, established by open and free societies, competing with each other at a global level, building bridges rather than walls, but each retaining its regional roots and customs.

The financial crisis is acting as a sort of ‘particle accelerator’, speeding us on our way to a new multipolar society. This is abundantly clear in the economic sphere, but politically and militarily too great powers in the making are beginning to sit up and make their presence felt. Russia and China particularly, but India as well, let no opportunity pass to show the world that they are a force to be reckoned with. The question is, though, whether Europe will be able, or willing, to play a part in this multipolar concert. ‘Able’ it most certainly should be, but ‘willing’ is another matter. Europe continues to suffer from cold feet. (…) Yet the way ahead for Europe is only too clear. If it wishes to play a role in tomorrow’s multipolar world and survive the ‘new age of empires’, its only option is to take a bold and decisive new step in the integration process. Seen in this light, the current financial crisis is not a disaster but rather a golden opportunity for the future. What is needed now is for our political leaders to overcome their cold feet and take the plunge.

It’s Friday afternoon, and if you, gentle readers, should want to leave the gloomy reality of a world in economic crisis behind you for a night out in Europe, you may be interested in having a look at a new web service called Happenr for hopefully useful suggestions about what to do.

According to a techcrunch review by Erick Schonfeld, Happenr is a new search engine, operated by a Belgian company, that currently collects information about events in Germany, Ireland, Belgium and the continent’s most important cities by scouring tourism, town, and cultural websites. While the review author sceptically remarks that “event databases are a dime a dozen,” he also mentions that “Happenr thinks there is still room for a comprehensive events search engine in Europe, and it believes it has a better way of indexing events automatically.”

Well, see for yourself. I for one actually found something I might do later on.

Garrison Keillor is an old American radio personality. As is often the case, he used to be a lot funnier than he is now. But once in a while he can still bring it:

The French junior minister for human rights said, “On this morning, we all want to be American so we can take a bite of this dream unfolding before our eyes.” When was the last time you heard someone from France say they wanted to be American and take a bite of something of ours? Ponder that for a moment.

The world expects us to elect pompous yahoos and instead we have us a 47-year-old prince from the prairie who cheerfully ran the race, and when his opponents threw sand at him, he just smiled back…

I just can’t imagine anybody cooler. Look at a photo of the latest pooh-bah conference - the hausfrau Merkel, the big glum Scotsman, that goofball Berlusconi, Putin with his B-movie bad-boy scowl, and Sarkozy, who looks like a district manager for Avis - you put Barack in that bunch and he will shine…

Even if you worship in the church of Fox, everyone you meet overseas is going to ask you about Obama and you may as well say you voted for him because, my friends, he is your line of credit over there. No need anymore to try to look Canadian.

Okay, some gushing here. And I’m not sure the American backpacker should pick off that maple leaf patch just yet.

On the other hand, “district manager for Avis” — ouch.

In other news, it’s cold and grey in central Germany this evening. How are things where you are?

As Barcelona-based property consultants Aguirre Newman publish a report that suggests Spanish property prices may need to fall by at least 23% for the market to return to any kind of normality, we learn today that Spain’s annual inflation dropped almost a full percentage point to 3.6 percent in October, according to data from the Spanish National Statistics Office. This was the lowest level in a year as energy and food costs fell and the real economy slowed dramatically. October’s figure, in line with estimates, was down from 4.5 percent a month before, but this piece of information obscures more of Spain’s current inflation dynamic than it actually reveals.

I’m beginning to think that our neighborhood grocery store here in Tbilisi could be an interesting source of stories about the politics and economics in the Second World. The tastiest corn chips come from Turkey, the cooking oil brands are almost all Russian (though with relations being what they are, I don’t know if the products themselves come directly from the neighbor to the north), the peanut butter from China looks too suspect to buy, and a fair amount of the pasta is Italian Barilla. Stocks sometimes still seem a question of what the store can get, rather than what the customers want. There are a whole bunch of fancy-looking Dutch cheeses just now, but they seem to be going for about EUR 16 a kilo, which is an awful lot for here. Particularly as I think behind the nice packaging they’re probably pretty ordinary, rather than actual super-artisan stuff that might command the price. And some of the choices are just odd: of the main shelving (the display area in the middle of the store) fully one-twelfth is given over to nothing but ketchup. Ketchup is the perfect condiment, but still. Further, the 750-ml Heinz regular in a squeezable plastic bottle with a label in Dutch is about 7.50 lari, while the the 750-ml Heinz regular in a squeezable plastic bottle with a label in French is about 9.50 lari. This does not look like a rational market. Maybe someone in management speaks English and I can find out why.

The guns of Europe fell silent as the Armistice took hold.

Not everywhere, of course. Fighting continued in revolutionary Germany and Russia, in the remains of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, and in other places whose history I don’t know well enough to cite here.

Death and destruction were meted out on a scale that is still difficult to fathom. On the columns of the memorial at Thiepval are carved the names of more than 70,000 Allied soldiers who fell in the area between July and November 1916, and who have no known grave. I was pointed to the photo by Teresa Nielsen Hayden, whose excellent posts on successive Armistice Days are moving, full of informative links and followed by astute commentary.

Though the events themselves are passing from living memory, the world shaped by the war is still all around us.

Update: Two more from TNH, 2002 and 2008.

As if the time in power for Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party had not provided enough comedy, a backbencher has been quoted saying something so far out of the potato patch that even the party’s leadership has condemned it. Not only did Artur Gorski claim that Al Qaeda was rubbing its hands with glee at Obama’s election, he added that “The black messiah of the new left has crushed the Republican candidate John McCain, and America will soon pay a high price for this quirk of democracy.” Not content with those sage remarks, he said “Obama is an approaching catastrophe. This marks the end of white man’s civilisation.”

According to Reuters, “Foreign Ministry spokesman Jacek Paszkowski said normally he would not comment on remarks of MPs, but added: ‘In this case we feel obliged to express our disapproval of MP Gorski’s address.’”

The bell, Olympiastadion, Berlin

An artefact is an ideology made manifest. The bell in this picture is the one made for the Reichssportfeld in Berlin, installed in the bell tower you can see behind it, brought crashing down when the damaged tower was demolished shortly after the second world war, repaired, and eventually rededicated as a monument “against war and violence”. But it’s not only that.

The bell was forged by the Gussstahlfabrik in Bochum, the heart of the Krupp steelworks, and the plant which made the Prussian and German armies’ gun barrels. Its owners and top managers were a crucial influence in German politics, from the turn away from Bismarckian conservatism in the 1890s all the way to 1933. It was there that the revolutionary centrifugal casting process - spinning molten steel from a tube turning at thousands of RPM outwards like candy floss - was invented in the 1930s, that made the Nazi army’s 88mm long-range antitank guns. Ordering the bell from them was political architecture in many ways - not only did it please the heavy industry lobby, it explicitly reminded everyone of the real sources of the state power the whole master plan was meant to celebrate. The bell tower itself grows out of a war monument; but the bell grew out of the military-industrial complex.

Even its later history is telling. Despite the RAF bombing, which damaged the structure, it was still standing when the Olympic stadium was taken over by the British army, just as the bombers could never really finish off the steelworks that made it. The British blew it up for fear it would fall down unpredictably. Later, in the 1960s, it was restored - by none other than Werner March, the original architect of the project. No wonder people worried about faschisticher Kontinuitat. The bell itself was then, rather uneasily, plonked in its current position with its new and vaguely glib, but undeniably well-meaning mission; it’s hard to escape the feeling that it’s been a lot like Germany.

Strangely enough, the Reichssportfeld is the only stone building that scares me. All my associations for it are wrong; I’m used to the stuff as a material which weathers, grows moss, turns black with industrial smoke, gets sandblasted back to its original colour by ambitious mayors. Although the stadium is limestone, like a Yorkshire hill, it’s still terrifyingly perfect.

Not much light

Apparently a great-great-great grandfather of his came from Ireland, and at least one visitor reports that this is all the rage right now.

From the chorus: “O’Leary, O’Reilly, O’Hare and O’Hara/There’s no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama.” The verses are pretty funny, too.