Baghdad  - The Iraqi parliament Thursday Thursday passed a 2009 budget of 58.6 billion dollars, after slashing around four billion dollars off government spending plans.

As global oil prices fell from 150 dollars per barrel in July to little more than 43 dollars on Wednesday, there were increasing concerns that huge cuts might be needed.

Oil exports account for almost 95 per cent of Iraq's revenue. This month's exports of crude oil reached an average of one million and 804 barrels per day.

Frankfurt  - European Central Bank (ECB) chief Jean-Claude Trichet ruled out on Thursday changes to the rules for joining the euro amid calls to help shield troubled Central and Eastern European economies from the global financial crisis.

"I would say that at this stage our position would be that it is extremely important that we do not change any framework," Trichet said at a press conference in Frankfurt following a meeting of the ECB's rate-setting council.

Copenhagen  - Denmark's c

Frankfurt  - The European Central Bank (ECB) cut rates for the fifth time in six months Thursday, lowering borrowing costs to an historic low and signalling further reductions in the coming months after it slashed its growth and inflation forecasts.

Thursday's hefty 50-basis-point reduction brought the ECB's benchmark refinancing rate down to 1.5 per cent and followed an announcement in London that the Bank of England (BoE) monetary policy committee had also trimmed the cost of money by 50 basis points.

Ideological orthodoxy on the part of the world's leading central bankers in the 1930s was partly to blame for the Great Depression, the biggest 'economic event' of the 20th century. And a similar ideological orthodoxy — in particular, a blinkered aversion to 'nationalisation' of insolvent banks — could prolong the current economic agony, says Liaquat Ahamed, a professional investment manager for 25 years who has worked at the World Bank and author of Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World (The Penguin Press, 2009).