The planned merger between European aerospace giant EADS and British defense company BAE Systems was finally called off for good on Wednesday following weeks of strife among France, Germany and Britain. The primary blame for the failure, said an EADS company spokesperson, can be laid at Berlin's door.

Some in the German government were concerned that the merger could have endangered the country's leadership role when it comes to key aerospace technologies. Furthermore, Spiegel reported on Monday that a key meeting last Friday ended without agreement due to a sudden German demand that the headquarters of the new company be located in Munich.

Global markets, full of talk of a euro zone break-up, rallied sharply on [Mr] Draghi's unexpected message. Just as shocked were the ECB boss's aides and his colleagues on the bank's policymaking Governing Council, none of whom knew [Mr] Draghi would make such a sweeping promise."Nobody knew this was going to happen. Nobody," one senior ECB official said of the speech.

The truth was, the speech was just the beginning. [Mr] Draghi was in no position to guarantee "whatever it takes." His words were a gamble that set off weeks of frenzied backroom diplomacy and public sparring that would severely test the relationships of the main protagonists in the euro zone crisis.

Key to [Mr] Draghi's gambit was peeling off enough members of the ECB's Governing Council. One of them, Jens Weidmann, head of the powerful Bundesbank, has become a vocal critic of [Mr] Draghi's plan. He and his hawkish German colleagues believe it will compromise the ECB's sacred independence and stoke inflation, a taboo in Germany since hyper-inflation in the 1920s gave rise to the Nazis. Yet getting Germany on board was essential. Europe's biggest economy, it has served as the bloc's paymaster during the crisis. If [Mr] Draghi's policies ran up against a German wall, they would surely fail.

Now many Germans feel betrayed, some convinced the ECB has been taken over by a cabal of dovish southerners. A poll released the day [Mr] Draghi announced his plan showed nearly one in two Germans had little or no confidence in him. Still, [Mr] Draghi has bought Europe time, and given politicians more space to sort out the mess. The currency's fate hinges on whether those politicians grab the opportunity [Mr] Draghi promised them on that warm summer day in London.

Ahmadinejad also said he did not take seriously the threat that Israel could launch a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, denied sending arms to Syria, and alluded to Iran's threats to the life of British author Salman Rushdie. The United States quickly dismissed the Iranian president's comments as "disgusting, offensive and outrageous." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hinted Israel could strike Iran's nuclear sites and criticized US President Barack Obama's position that sanctions and diplomacy should be given more time to stop Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Ahmadinejad, who has used previous UN sessions to question the Holocaust and the US account of the September 11, 2001, attacks, did not heed the warning and instead expanded on his previous rejection of Israel's right to exist. Western envoys typically walk out of Ahmadinejad's UN speeches in protest at his remarks. "Iran has been around for the last seven, 10 thousand years. They (the Israelis) have been occupying those territories for the last 60 to 70 years, with the support and force of the Westerners. They have no roots there in history," he said, referring to the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948.

"We do believe that they have found themselves at a dead end and they are seeking new adventures in order to escape this dead end. Iran will not be damaged with foreign bombs," Ahmadinejad said, speaking though an interpreter at his Manhattan hotel. "We don't even count them as any part of any equation for Iran. During a historical phase, they (the Israelis) represent minimal disturbances that come into the picture and are then eliminated."

In 2005, Ahmadinejad called Israel a "tumor" and echoed the words of the former Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, by saying that Israel should be wiped off the map.

“When people get at each other’s throat, the rich and the poor and the left and the right and so on, and you have a basic breakdown, that becomes very threatening,” Dalio told CNBC in an exclusive interview on “Squawk Box.”

“For example, Hitler came to power in 1933, which was the depth of the Great Depression, because of the social tension between the factions. So I think it very much is dependent on how the people work this through together and worry about the social elements.” Still, he said the most likely situation is a prolonged deleveraging process. That process worries him, Dalio said.

“I worry about another leg down in the economies causing social disruption because deleveragings can be very painful — it depends on how they’re managed,” he said.

"The equipment was supposed to explode after being put to work, in order to dismantle all our systems," declared Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the security committee in Iran’s parliament. "But the wisdom of our experts thwarted the enemy conspiracy."

He said the measures were intended to slow down the country’s burgeoning nuclear program. Siemens issued a flat denial. "We have no business dealings related to the Iranian nuclear program," said company spokesman Alexander Machowetz, noting that the company has not worked with Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

The global financial crisis and double-dip recession in many countries has left Germany largely unscathed in recent years, but there are signs that trend may be reversing. Luxury German carmaker Daimler announced on Thursday that this year it would no longer reach the €5 billion ($6.52 billion) in operating profits it recorded in 2011. Prior to the announcement, the company had hoped to match last year's earnings.

"The overall market in Europe is deteriorating, with more negative developments than expected," Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche told reporters in Stuttgart. Bloomberg has also reported that the current European car market is the worst in 17 years and that problems are starting to spread into the luxury automobile sector, once thought to be immune from the crisis.

On Friday, the Financial Times Deutschland newspaper reported on alleged plans by Daimler to introduce €1 billion in cost-cutting measures.

Lord Rothschild, an elder member of the dynastic Rothschild banking family, has taken the position against the euro through RIT Capital Partners, the 1.9 billion pound investment trust of which he is executive chairman, according to a report in the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph.

As cynicism that the single currency is on its last legs continues to spread among some euro zone politicians and the public, the influential financier has used the currency as a form of hedge. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mario Draghi, have both said that they will do whatever it takes to keep the euro zone together though concerns that the currency cannot survive the schism between the euro zone’s north and south and the gulf between debtors and paymasters gets deeper.

Well at least one person is now and he’s Manuel Barroso, no lesser figure than the President of the European Commission. In his State of the European Union address to the European Parliament last week he told us not to be afraid of the word ‘federation’ and not as some distant dream; he is already working towards a new European treaty, involving the transfer of massive new powers to the EU, which he wants in place as soon as 2014.

Following hard on the heels of the Barroso speech came a wide-ranging list of proposals from a group of 11 EU states - led by the German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle - that would go way beyond anything that any UK Government (not just this one) could sign up to.

The list is spectacular in both its breadth and ambition.

- There would be a directly elected European President and new powers for the European Parliament.

- There would be a pan-European foreign ministry with greatly expanded powers to run an EU foreign policy decided by majority voting (so no vetoes by the UK or anyone else).

- Defence policy would also be Europeanised, with the explicit aim that “this could eventually involve a European army”.

- There would be a new EU police organisation to guard all external borders, with all visas run from Brussels.

- Perhaps most controversially of all, in the future it’s proposed that EU Treaties could be changed by majority voting.

In other words, changes as significant as those in the Maastricht or Lisbon Treaties could simply be imposed on a country, whether it liked them or not. And in case anyone still really believes that the UK is ‘winning the debate in Europe’ the list of governments backing these proposals include every major EU state except… Britain.