Documents seen by the Guardian show that at least $20bn appears to have been moved out of Russia during a four-year period between 2010 and 2014. The true figure could be $80bn, detectives believe.
One senior figure involved in the inquiry said the money from Russia was “obviously either stolen or with criminal origin”.

Investigators are still trying to identify some of the wealthy and politically influential Russians behind the operation, known as “the Global Laundromat”.
They estimate a group of about 500 people were involved. These include oligarchs, Moscow bankers, and figures working for or connected to the FSB, the successor spy agency to the KGB.

President Trump on Saturday defended the success of his first face-to-face meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, dismissing a barrage of critical news accounts that describe it as “awkward.”  “Despite what you have heard from the FAKE NEWS, I had a GREAT meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel,” Mr. Trump said Saturday morning via his personal Twitter account.  News reports of the the meeting and a joint press conference Friday at the White House were dominated by descriptions of “awkward” moments between the two leaders, including the president’s quip that he and Ms. Merkel had “something in common” in being wiretapped by U.S. spies.  Mr. Trump was referring to revelation in 2013 that President Obama authorized National Security Agency eavesdropping on her and his claim that Mr. Obama did the same to him during the 2016 presidential campaign.  National Public Radio declared the meeting “The Axis of Awkward.”  U.S. News and World Report dubbed it “Trump’s Awkward Merkel Summit.”

The launch by British Airways’ owner of a low-cost long-haul airline could be a key staging post in the development of the growing trend for cheaper and longer flights.

'Level' has been unveiled by International Airlines Group as a low-cost, long-haul carrier operating out of Barcelona from June with flights to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Buenos Aires and Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.

The move will put the company in direct competition with companies such as Norwegian, which has tried to carve a niche for itself in the nascent cheap long-haul flights market...Level will be run by IAG’s Spanish carrier Iberia’s flight and cabin crew and fares with start from €99 one-way or $149 compared to the lowest price for flights on Norwegian from Barcelona to San Francisco of €162, according to prices published on its website.

The Fed’s chair, Janet Yellen, said a wide range of indicators showed the US economy was in rude health, allowing its interest rate setting committee to push rates back towards historically normal levels. Policymakers voted nine to one to raise rates.
Speaking after the decision, Yellen said she had met Donald Trump’s treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, “a couple of times” but had only been “introduced” to the president himself.   “I fully expect to have a strong relationship with secretary Mnuchin,” she said. “We had good discussions about the economy, about regulatory objectives, the work of the FSOC [Financial Stability Oversight Council] global economic developments, and I look forward to continuing to work with him.” She said she had had a very brief meeting with Trump “and appreciated that as well”.

Earlier in the day the Department of Commerce said retail sales had inched up by 0.1% in February, and that they had been better than it had previously estimated in January.

Oil prices have plunged to the lowest level this year as US shale producers boost output at an astonishing pace and crude inventories keep rising, triggering a wave of selling by hedge funds with record speculative positions. The US surge threatens to neutralise cuts agreed by the Opec cartel and a Russia-led group of producers last November, potentially delaying a full recovery of the market until 2018 or even later.  Texas light crude fell to  $48.90 a barrel on Thursday after yet another surprise jump in US stocks. Prices have slid 8pc in three days and have broken through key levels of technical support, dousing enthusiasm for commodities across the board. Higher interest rates are expected to push up the value of the dollar and suck in foreign funds to the US financial system. Surveys show firms are concerned that the high dollar will dent exports, and Trump has accused China and rival exporting nations of winning trade wars after artificially depressing their currencies.

Fed watchers were alarmed by a 31 January letter to Fed chair Janet Yellen from Representative Patrick McHenry, the vice-chairman of the House committee on financial services. McHenry did not pull his punches. “Despite the clear message delivered by President Donald Trump in prioritising America’s interest in international negotiations,” McHenry wrote, “it appears that the Federal Reserve continues negotiating international regulatory standards for financial institutions among global bureaucrats in foreign lands without transparency, accountability, or the authority to do so. This is unacceptable.”  In her reply of 10 February, Yellen firmly rebutted McHenry’s arguments. She pointed out that the Fed does indeed have the authority it needs, that the Basel agreements are not binding, and that, in any event, “strong regulatory standards enhance the stability of the US financial system” and promote the competitiveness of financial firms.  But that will not be the end of the story. The battle lines are now drawn, and McHenry’s letter shows the arguments that will be deployed in Congress by some Republicans close to the president. There has always been a strand of thinking in Washington that dislikes foreign entanglements, in this and other areas. While Yellen’s arguments are correct, the Fed’s entitlement to participate in international negotiations does not oblige it to do so, and a new appointee might argue that it should not.

Here's a number to play with: $1.8 trillion. This is the amount of sovereign debt borrowed globally in a foreign currency, the overwhelming majority of it in US dollars. Add the amount of dollar debt attributable to foreign corporations, and the numbers soar off into the stratosphere.  Most of the time, these debts are perfectly harmless, and nobody much worries about them. But right now, they are making everyone distinctly nervous. Already over the last two years, the dollar has appreciated 25 per cent in nominal terms against the rest of the world. If analysis by Moody’s, the credit rating agency, is to be believed, Trumponomics make a further, sharp appreciation – possibly by as much as an additional 25 per cent in real terms – all but inevitable, playing havoc with the debt dynamics of many overseas countries and companies. By the by, it might also remodel global trade, potentially dramatically....

Western political and media elites reacted with horror to President Trump’s repeated statements that NATO is “obsolete” during the 2016 electoral campaign. They have also reacted with skepticism to more recent efforts by senior administration officials to affirm the U.S. commitment to NATO while pressing America’s allies to do more for their own defense. The critics forget both NATO’s history and — more fundamentally — confuse means with ends in U.S. national security. NATO is an instrument and, accordingly, something the United States can and should examine and seek to fix when it is not working properly. Mr. Trump has correctly understood that NATO isn’t doing its job.  Post-Cold War history demonstrates NATO’s failure to adapt to changing circumstances and requirements. George W. Bush administration officials appropriately questioned the alliance’s contribution to U.S. operations in Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks and NATO’s first-ever invocation of its mutual defense obligations under Article Five of the Washington Treaty. Later, NATO’s 2011 airstrikes against Libya illustrated considerable shortcomings as key allies proved unable to sustain the campaign for lack of precision bombs against a foe barely able to fight back.In 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, NATO members all too readily opted to respond primarily through coordinated U.S.-European Union economic sanctions that predictably failed to deter subsequent Russian intervention in eastern Ukraine. Former President Obama bears no small responsibility for this, having declared in April 2014 that Russia could not be “deterred from further escalation by military force” at a time when decisive deployments of U.S. and NATO military forces in NATO member states surrounding Ukraine might well have affected Mr. Putin’s calculations. But Mr. Obama was far from alone among NATO leaders in his reluctance do this.  NATO today has three major problems. First, the alliance has spent far more time discussing its membership than its purpose, leaving its goals unclear. If NATO is a defensive alliance, why did it intervene in Yugoslavia’s civil wars of the 1990s and launch airstrikes in Libya? Neither threatened NATO members with attack. If NATO seeks to stabilize Europe and Eurasia, how did NATO officials expect to do that without a security architecture that incorporated Russia on mutually acceptable terms? Conversely, if NATO sees Moscow as an existential danger and aims to contain and deter Russia, why do so few alliance members meet minimal standards for defense spending and military readiness?

Europe -  European capital adequacy directives typically transpose Basel accords into EU law. If the Basel process stalls, transatlantic deals, which are the crucial underpinning of western capital markets, will be far harder to reach.  There is a further complication arising from Brexit. Absent any special deal between the EU27 and the UK, British and EU regulators will come together in Basel, not in the European Banking Authority. If Basel becomes a talking shop, without the ability to set firm standards, another key link in the chain will be broken, and it will be harder for the UK to argue that if London’s banks meet international standards, they should be granted equal treatment in the EU.  As central bankers bid farewell to the devil they know, financial regulation has entered a period of high uncertainty – and high anxiety for policymakers as they await an announcement from Mar-a-Lago. No likely Federal Reserve Board candidates have been spotted at poolside, or being interviewed on the golf course, but a decision cannot be far off. Nothing can be taken for granted. The financial world is holding its collective breath.

As President Trump struggles to staff his administration with sympathisers who will help transpose tweets into policy, the exodus of Obama appointees from the federal government and other agencies continues. For the financial world, one of the most significant departures was that of Daniel Tarullo, the Federal Reserve governor who has led its work on financial regulation for the last seven years.  It would be a stretch to say that Tarullo has been universally popular in the banking community. He led the charge in arguing for much higher capital ratios, in the US and elsewhere. He was a tough negotiator, with a well-tuned instinct for spotting special pleading by financial firms. But crocodile tears will be shed in Europe to mark his resignation. European banks, and even their regulators, were concerned by his enthusiastic advocacy of even tougher standards in Basel 3.5 (or Basel 4, as bankers like to call it), which would, if implemented in the form favoured by the US, require further substantial capital increases for Europe’s banks in particular. In his absence, these proposals’ fate is uncertain.  But Tarullo has also been an enthusiastic promoter of international regulatory cooperation, with the frequent flyer miles to prove it. For some years, he has chaired the Financial Stability Board’s little-known but important Standing Committee on Supervisory and Regulatory Cooperation. His commitment to working with colleagues in international bodies such as the FSB and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, to reach global regulatory agreements enabling banks to compete on a level playing field, has never been in doubt.

Theresa May has defiantly insisted her timetable for triggering Brexit will not be blown off course despite suffering her first Parliamentary defeat over the Article 50 bill.  The House of Lords voted to amend the Bill to force the Government to guarantee the rights of EU citizens living in the UK. Seven Tory peers - including the former pensions minister Baroness Altmann - backed the amendment.  But the Prime Minister is confident the amendment will be rejected by the Commons later this month, and Downing Street insisted the timetable for Brexit “remains unchanged”... Lords who voted to alter the Bill were accused of “playing with fire” and critics accused them of pointless “posturing” and “doing a disservice to the national interest”.  The scale of the Government’s defeat in the Lords, where the proposal to amend the Bill was passed by 358 votes to 256, prompted speculation that Mrs May could face a fresh Tory rebellion when the Bill returns to the Commons.  Conservative whips are confident, however, that no more than a handful of Tory MPs will support the amendment. Labour's amendment to the EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill, tabled with Liberal Democrat and crossbench support, calls for ministers to bring forward proposals ensuring the rights of EU citizens living here to continue post-Brexit, within three months of triggering Article 50.

The Balkans is in danger of slipping under Russian influence if the Trump administration ignores the region, Albania’s prime minister has warned in an interview with The Telegraph.  Questions are also being asked over whether the European Union is doing enough to ensure stability and block Moscow’s alleged plots.  In a wide-ranging interview, Albania’s charismatic prime minister, Edi Rama, said without US support “the Balkans would not be a place where there is peace and cooperation”.

“For the US this area is very important strategically and the US is very important for us,” he added.  Given Russia’s apparent role in the prime minister’s assassination plot in neighbouring Montenegro, disclosed by The Telegraph this week, there are worries Washington’s disinterest will embolden Moscow.  “Russia has been interested in spreading its influence and there’s a lot of it in this region,” Mr Rama, 52,...

Early last month, Andy Haldane, chief economist at the Bank of England, blamed“irrational behaviour” for the failure of the BoE’s recent forecasting models. The failure to spot this irrationality had led policymakers to forecast that the British economy would slow after last June’s Brexit referendum. Instead, British consumers have been on a heedless spending spree since the vote to leave the European Union; and, no less illogically, construction, manufacturing, and services have recovered. Haldane offers no explanation for this burst of irrational behaviour. Nor can he: to him, irrationality simply means behaviour that is inconsistent with the forecasts derived from the BoE’s model. It’s not just Haldane or the BoE. What mainstream economists mean by rational behaviour is not what you or I mean. In ordinary language, rational behaviour is that which is reasonable under the circumstances. But in the rarefied world of neoclassical forecasting models, it means that people, equipped with detailed knowledge of themselves, their surroundings, and the future they face, act optimally to achieve their goals. That is, to act rationally is to act in a manner consistent with economists’ models of rational behaviour. Faced with contrary behaviour, the economist reacts like the tailor who blames the customer for not fitting their newly tailored suit.

The City of London has warned that the loss of banking jobs to EU countries due to Brexit could threaten British and European financial stability. Interviews with more than half a dozen senior bankers and business leaders reveal growing certainty that the threat of losing single market access will force a wave of relocations this year and may cause an “unwinding” of a cluster of related businesses.

While the immediate loss of a few thousand jobs is viewed with relative equanimity, concern is mounting over the knock-on effect on financial stability if the City’s valuable related professions begin to fragment.   Douglas Flint, the chairman of HSBC, Britain’s biggest bank, said common regulation needed to be agreed with the remaining 27 EU members once Brexit talks got under way or there was a risk of sparking turbulence in the financial system. “One of the critical pieces is the ecosystem that exists, which effectively connects the fund managers to the risk managers to the liquidity providers to the insurance providers and the credit providers … it all benefits from all the other pieces being there,” Flint said.

Relatives of the 12 people killed in December when a truck ploughed into a Christmas market in Berlin have expressed their dismay at the negligent way they say they have been treated by German authorities. About 50 people who lost loved ones in the Islamic State-claimed terrorist attack reportedly told a private meeting called by Germany’s outgoing president, Joachim Gauck, and the interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, they felt abandoned at a deeply upsetting time.   Relatives said the first official communication they had with authorities was a bill sent to them by the coroner’s office. The letter reportedly included a warning that if the bill was not paid within a certain timeframe, the recipients would face legal action.  One relative told Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt newspapers that when she received the letter she had thought at the very least it would be a letter of condolence from Berlin’s mayor.  Those who were certain that their family members were among the dead said they were prevented by security personnel from entering the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church on Breitscheidplatz for a religious service held the day after the attack on 19 December. The reason they were given was that high-ranking German politicians – including Gauck – were among the guests. According to the papers, which reported on the four-hour meeting at Gauck’s Bellevue Palace, the president told the relatives he was distressed to hear they had been unable to enter the church and that he had not known about it at the time.

There is now a growing band of politicians, entrepreneurs and policy strategists who argue that a basic income could potentially hold the solution to some of the big problems of our time. Some of these new converts have alighted upon the basic income as an answer to our fragmenting welfare state. They point to the increasingly precarious nature of today’s labour market for those in low-paid, low-skilled work: growing wage inequality, an increasing number of part-time and temporary jobs, and rogue employers routinely getting away with exploitative practices.

This grim reality collides with an increasingly punitive welfare state. Our welfare system was originally designed as a contributory system of unemployment insurance, in which workers put in during the good times, and took out during temporary periods of unemployment. But a big chunk of welfare spending now goes on permanently supporting people in jobs that don’t pay enough to support their families. As the contributory principle has been eroded, politicians have sought to create a new sense of legitimacy by loading the system with sanctions that dock jobseeker benefits for minor transgressions.

In his acceptance speech, Steinmeier, 61, said Germany should be an “anchor of hope” while democratic institutions were under threat across the globe. “As the foundations are shaking elsewhere, we have to prop up those foundations even more strongly,” he said  Gaining 75% of votes in the first round, he beat four outsider candidates fielded by the smaller parties, including Christoph Butterwegge, a political scientist and poverty researcher; Albrecht Glaser, a former Christian Democrat running for the rightwing populist Alternative for Germany party (AfD); and Engelbert Sonneborn, the father of the leader of the satirical organisation the Party.  Despite the role being largely ceremonial, past German presidents have aspired to act as a moral authority in debates of national and international importance. Steinmeier succeeds Joachim Gauck, 77, a former Protestant pastor and East German civil rights activist who told the Guardian this month that Germany would “staunchly stand by the European project”.

The world must take note of what happened in Montenegro. It paid scant attention last October when reports surfaced of an attempted coup. All eyes were on the American election; Montenegro is small and hardly known. But we can now reveal that plans were laid for a bloody coup, which was designed to kill the prime minister and destabilise the country. The goal was to prevent this sovereign nation from joining Nato. According to intelligence sources, the puppet-master was Russia. It all sounds familiar. In the last few chaotic years, Moscow has backed a separatist movement in Ukraine, propped up Bashar al-Assad in Syria, stands accused of murdering critics on foreign soil and is believed to have bankrolled opposition parties abroad. It is even alleged to have interfered in the US election...if Europe is so intent on integration then what is it doing to defend countries such as Montenegro? Several European countries spend less on defence than the budget of the New York police department. Britain must meet its own obligations and take the case for Western resolve directly to the Trump administration. The stakes are high. In Munich, the Russian foreign minister spoke of a post-West order. The reality of that proposition may sadly be disorder and freedom for tyrants. Only Nato retains the power, and hopefully the will, to stand up for democracy and the rule of law.

ECB officials think that they have the obligation to explain to investors the monetary policy decisions, and the effects are beneficial for the functioning of the channel for sending the monetary policy to the real economy. The institution of the EU ombudsman is led by Emily O'Reilly, who got the vote of the European Parliament for that position in 2013. According to its mission, the Ombudsman investigates the complaints concerning the activity of various European institutions and agencies. The complaint addressed to the EU ombudsman focuses particularly on the role of Mario Draghi, who is also a member of the G30. The CEO website shows that "our studies show a severe lack of critical distance between the decision making elements of the ECB and the bankers that are members of the G30", and "as the European Central Bank has also been given the task of regulating the financial sector, any real or perceived conflicts of interests represent a major risk to the integrity of the ECB".  ECB spokesperson said that "we have a large range of regulations and instruments to avoid apparent or potential conflicts of interest".  The CEO representatives think that the current framework is not enough, because "our analyses show that the high ranking personnel of the ECB is way too close to the representatives of the banks it is supposed to oversee".   A similar complaint of the NGO was rejected in 2012, but the current Ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly, made the decision to open the investigation due to the fact that "the ECB has taken on more major responsibilities in the last few years", according to Financial Times.

Germany posted a record trade surplus in 2016, just weeks after Donald Trump's top trade adviser accused the country of exploiting a "grossly undervalued" euro.

The country's €253bn (£215bn) trade surplus was the result of a 1.2pc rise in exports to €1.2 trillion, while imports only rose 0.6pc to €954.6bn, according to the federal statistics office. The 2016 surplus surpasses the previous high of €244.3bn set in 2015.   "This increase in net exports is a very encouraging sign for Germany," said Benno Bunse, head of Germany's economic development agency. "The overall picture is of an economy developing healthily towards being a place of manufacture and robust consumer-led development."  Germany's 2016 current account surplus, which measures the total money flowing in and out of a country, of €266bn, surpassed China's last year, making it the world's largest.