BANKS TALKING

I love my real time financial journalism and in the past few weeks the Banks - or rather their Governors, Presidents and Executive Board Members around Europe have been talking like they never did before. European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet is the most interesting for me; charismatic, a sound economist - the way he handles journalists is incredible. Watching him in action at a lockin or a press conference is electrifying theatre of the highest order.

Euro Zone finance and the sexy economic indicators releasing all the time can be engrossing, but take an event like the Bhutto assassination and the world changes in seconds.

I take my eye off Eurostat and wizz into the BBC Newsroom where News 24 and World combine to roll to an audience of 180 million, spending all evening there as events unfold for studio analysis. Having asked Bhutto the probing questions every time I met her, why do you do this when you have a family, what difference can you really make to Pakistan, etc etc, I have gotten to know her and Pakistani politics is going to be a much less colourful place without her.
She made it more interesting- she had so much more warmth and personality than some of her contemporaries- and so many felt they knew her, her people, her party workers, even some of us in the media.

Returning to the newswires, the markets are reacting bigtime. Financial news, for all its special terminology and rarified reporting atmosphere, is very firmly fixed in the world of geo-politics and the impact of the killing of Benazir Bhutto is a perfect example of this.