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Barclays has released a remuneration report which revealed the pay packages of the top honchos. Fuelling the row over banker’s bonuses the report showed Bob Diamond receiving an annual bonuses 2.5 times the size of his salary, and with his salary for 2011 at 1.35m that sounds better than a kick in the teeth! Other members of Barclays have been paid even larger bonuses than that.

The Police review published out yesterday in the UK has advised over 1 billion pounds worth of cuts from the police budget over the next three years. They plan to target overtime and bonuses mainly but it essentially will lead to the pay of many officers being cut.

Axel Weber has piped up about euro interest rate move, saying that ‘he sees the signal for a move as quite necessary’, not content with that bold statement he also mentioned that the inflation outlook may be worse than the ECB forecasts anticipate. 

Meanwhile the attention was back on Greece yesterday as the country raised 1.62billion at a six-month treasury auction. Greece had to pay a higher premium after the recent downgrade of its bonds by three notches, while seeing its ten-year yield climb to the highest since the euro began in 1999.

Barack Obama has had to give up on his promise to close Guantanamo bay, as it was revealed yesterday that public opinion has been firmly against the idea, especially at Congress.  Meanwhile dollar continues to struggle against oil prices and the Libyan conflict, an Arab league ministerial meeting will be held on Saturday to discuss the crisis.

Today the UK opens with the Trade Balance at 9:30 which generally creates some volatility for the pound, there is doubt that we will see the steady demand required to turn into positive growth. Germany follows with their Industrial production, expected out higher than the previous month. In New Zealand their interest rate decision tonight could see a drop to 2.75% from 3%.

Latest exchange rates at time of writing