Common Endeavour

• First up let's start with people at Barclays, your corresondent reckons that they will rue the day they chose the Sultan's shekel over the Queen's shilling. For now they seem desperate to raise cash and have got in almighty scrap with the Guardian over tax avoidance. Sunny has more.
• OPEC have announced that they will not be cutting oil production any further, Hugo and his Chavista's are not best pleased but may still have reason to be happy. Although initially oil fell on the news but the price appears to have picked up when the Fed announced a new lot of Quantitative Easing.

• Which brings us nicely to the subject of the Feds announcement if a $1 trillion quantitative easing plan. Oil has shot up, so has gold although your correspondent has worries about this endless use of gold as a hedge against absolutely everything.
• When something needs to be done in government, the tried and tested method is to get some old buffer to write a report on it. This week we had the Turner report and your correspondent will have to admit to not having read it yet. Martin Wolf seems to be of the opinion "too little too late".
• And finally we come to the markets, last week your corresondent reckoned the pound was through the worst of things, not quite since the pound fell against the euro although appears to be up against the dollar. FTSE edged slowly upwards over the week.

About the author:  Andreas is a Labour activist based in Norwich, he's organiser for his local ward of Town Close. He works as a software developer and being the mercenary soul that he is has found himself working in the insurance, financial services, electronics and marketing industries at various points in time. He blogs at CitizenAndreas. Read more from this author