W hatever his flaws as a politician turn out to be, Mark Carney does at least possess self-awareness. “You’re supposed to campaign in poetry and govern in prose,” he said in his final campaign speech on April 27th, on the eve of the election. “As the assembled media will tell you, I campaigned in prose. So I’m going to govern in econometrics.”

Germany's Social Democrats (SPD) backed a coalition deal with the CDU/CSU conservatives on Wednesday in the final step to forming a government in Europe's largest economy, and nominated their leader Lars Klingbeil as finance minister.