内容摘要：Among them were John and Valerie Yuill, who picked up glass, bricks and roof tiles.

Among them were John and Valerie Yuill, who picked up glass, bricks and roof tiles.

It is true that there was far more relative calm at the end of the IMF Meetings compared to the beginning. Why? Because the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has seized control of the tariff agenda and has almost single-handedly calmed markets and the rest of the world.Financial diplomats put down the Bessent ascendancy and the critical 90 day pause in the so-called "reciprocal" tariffs to some farcical West Wing antics.

The story goes Bessent was able to get the ear of Trump regarding the bond market damage from his tariffs, only after a separate White House economic adviser managed to use the bait of a fake meeting to lure away the hardline tariff hawk and author of the infamous reciprocal tariff equation Pete Navarro from patrolling the Oval Office.Wall Street bosses are thought to have suggested that only by firing Navarro, can some semblance of normality return. Insiders suggest that Trump will never get rid of his trade adviser, as he served time in jail after the January 6 riots in support of the President.At best this sounds like the future of the world economy and all our livelihoods played out like a real time Hilary Mantel novel about the court of Trump. At worst it is leading to financiers and Governments starting to think the unthinkable about how much further the US or the rest of the world might go and currently, the uncertainty about everything is more concerning than the direct impact of the tariffs.

And that uncertainty is prompting some fairly wild theories about what might come next.At times of acute global financial stress, "swap lines" between central banks exist to preserve financial stability, making sure there is a constant supply of US dollars.

But now some of the world's central banks have started to game out what might happen if the US chose to use its dollar "swap lines" to the rest of the world as a form of diplomatic leverage or even a weapon.

Is it inconceivable that the US might deny them or veto the Federal Reserve handing them out? One just has to assume it is inconceivable, because in many instances there is no way to mitigate it. But the nightmarish scenario for the world financial system, however unlikely, is now not wholly implausible.Both men deny any involvement at all with the felling and claim they were each at their respective homes all night.

and took his car to get to the scene, whileand his co-accused was lying.

In his closing speech, prosecutor Richard Wright KC said the "two-man team" and "odd couple" had seen it as "just a tree" and "they must have thought that this was a bit of a laugh".But, he said, they had not appreciated the public's outrage at the destruction of "something so beautiful for no good reason".