Foreword Some years ago, television and radio news bulletins began to include a reference to two or three financial indicators ­ the FTSE 100 index, the dollar/euro or ster- ling/dollar exchange rate, perhaps the oil price. For many viewers and listeners, this bald market data must be at best boring ­ an interruption in the flow of "real news" ­ at worst confusing. The numbers are, almost literally, a turn-off. Yet, properly explained and set in context, those figures and the markets that generate them are the key to interpreting many of the events covered in the rest of the bulletin. The sovereign debt crisis, Google versus Apple, even record trans- fer deals between the world's top soccer clubs: the explanations for these and many other stories are found in financial markets and economic statistics. The power of markets is illustrated by the now-famous observation by one of