Hello I'm Simon Long, the finance editor of the Economist and this is Money Talks.

Coming up this week, some economic predictions for the new year.

This is billed as the year in which we get landmark Eurozone reform.

We're really going to start fixing the roof on the Eurozone.

They all?

No, this is the one because the elections are over now. roof on the Eurozone. Are they all?

No, this is the one because the elections are over now,

Simon, so we're going to definitely, definitely do it this time.

And I think we're definitely, definitely not going to do it.

And how can the field of economics attract more women?

My hope is that people being aware of this will kind of make them slow down when they're

looking at a paper and kind of considering whether the woman should get tenure based on this paper.

But the more tangible thing I think would be to change the authoring system.

To begin the new year, we're going to predict what kind of a year it will be for

money talks, what kind of stories we will be covering and what economic news would

we like to happen. To help us out we've enlisted John O'Sullivan, our economics editor to look at

Europe and the UK and Henry Kerr, our US economics editor, to look at his side of the

pond. And we'll be taking the view from Asia in a world in 2018

Economic Special. Hello John, thanks for joining us and hello Henry over there

in Washington. John, let me start with you and you've got a big job economics editor of the

economist so a big question how would you sum up the state of the global economy at

moment it's in about as good as shape as it's been since the financial crisis.

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