Im francine lacqua. We are getting breaking news from germany. That december number bank in line with expectations. That is also what we were expecting. The Current Conditions number is well in line with expectations. Economists got it right. There you go. Breaking news. Lets check on the euro if we have that in terms of current assessment. That is one of the strongest figures at 110. Lets begin with our other top story. Vladimir putin taking to the podium. The spotlight on the russian president today. Markets and investors around the world are all ears to hear what the russian president will say at his annual press conference. It goes on for a while. We will be in and out of this for the next few hours. Four or gifive hours. Journalists have been told not to bring in cuddly toys. There will be no cuddly toys of out within the auditorium. Lets get our Bloomberg View columnists take on this. Jim oneill is with us. Who was that daft person how muchay that the world has changed. That is s
Francine lacqua is off today. She will be back in the new year. Lithuaniahave we got, preparing to join the euro. We are going to speak to the lithuanian finance minister. Is his country ready for the move . We are going to find out. Over theing to talk next few minutes about the a350. What is the a350 . Compositee new have aluminum aircraft from airbus. With designed to compete the 787. It is super efficient compared with its predecessors. Qatar airways is the launch customer. I was talking to Fabrice Bregier about this airplane. He has high hopes for it. This aircraft is sold out. Despite the fact that oil prices are lower, airlines still very much want this airplane. It makes a big difference. Oil prices are down but if you can still fly the most efficient airplane, you can offer the cheapest tickets. In a few minutes, we are going to speak to the boss of Qatar Airways. Looking forward to that conversation. Let me update you on the markets. It is monday morning in the week before ch
Welcome back. You are watching the pulse live from bloombergs European Headquarters. Were near london. Im guy johnson. It is the second act in athens today. The Greek Parliament voted again on a president ial candidate put forward by the Prime Minister. Lets go to athens to get the latest. Marcus joins us now from there. Walk us through what the latest is in terms of expectations for this vote in an hours time . Can it get close to the 180 needs third round . Morning, guy. The challenge for him today is very big. 180 is the magic number, which is what he will need next week. Today people will be looking to see how close he can get to that. Around 170. If he can hit 170, he would be looking lot better than he was looking at the end of the first round when he got 160, which was on the low end of expectations. 170 is kind of the minimum people think with a big final push maybe he might get there in the third round. Overall, though, he needs to sway one of the smaller parties. He made an o
And they know gas prices can go down and up and they want to make sure the vehicles they are buying get the very best fuel economy. Welcome to bloomberg surveillance countdown. High, what could be more seasonal . What could be more seasonal . We find the best ones. Anna has had two. Probably too early. Expected in the oil price just yet . Thinky or all analysts oil prices will fall more next week, we have had 10 weeks in decline since october. In one of the weeks we see a hint of green but every other downs red. The uti crude almost 10 , brent contract falling 8 . We are expecting declines even further below. Go low could oil blue oil go . Many are looking so pessimistic on this overall. People who have the lowest to lose say it could go as low as 40. Say it will stick to at least 65, their aura bouts. There or abouts. The head of iran says it could go as low as 40. I might remind you that below 60 is already behind us this year. We know the reason why, opec decided not to rain back pr
Yesterdays plummeting freefall of the ruble. The Russian Finance Ministry announced that it is selling foreign currency. Ryan chilcote joins us to bring it all down. Give us a sense of what we have seen this morning and announcement and our argot. Look us through the details. Who would have thought the deputy finance minister of russia would be channeling mario draghi . That is exactly what hes doing. He said the finance minister is prepared to sell as much of its foreign currency reserves as it takes. A consultant adding that they have 7 billion worth of foreign currency reserves at their disposal. Weve seen an extraordinary move in the ruble. It hit 80 against the dollar yesterday. It is now down about 20 from that, yet it is still up 10 on the week. We got news that yesterday, the bank of russia was on the market , intervening to the tune of just under 2 billion. There are rumors that they are on the market today. The biggest support for the ruble yesterday came from the economy min