Planet business

LAURA SLATTERYperuses the week in business

Dictionary corner

Rigueur is the word the French use for economic austerity, aka the great slash-and-burn, although, until this week, it's been the word they've been trying not to use very much at all. Under orders from President Nicolas Sarkozy not to speak of the dreaded rigueur in public, French ministers have been salami-slicing announcements of deeper cost savings.

But measures to curb public spending were approved by the cabinet this week, with ministerial perks first up for the chop as Sarkozy waxed about a "moral imperative" to set a better example. In France's case, this means no presidential hunt this year and the decommissioning of no fewer than 10,000 state cars.

Shop talk

It was all going a bit quiet on the celebrity-retailer union front of late but US department store Macy's has broken cover by signing up erstwhile material girl Madonna (51) to lend her name to a retro range of Desperately Seeking Susan-style black lace and stonewashed denim clothes for teenagers. But what with Madonna having long left her teenage days behind her, the apparel will be co-endorsed by her 13-year-old daughter, Lourdes – more material teen than material girl. Madonna has form in the clothing "design" game, having previously created M by Madonna for youthful Swedish fast-fashion merchants HM.

£1.2 billion

– Amount the UK spent dealing with the swine flu pandemic, an independent review has found.

' This is not a jobless recovery'

– Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation Batt O’Keeffe has got lots of jobs he wants to announce.

Status update

Inside account: Gordon Brown is using his new free time to write an account of the origins of the banking crisis and its consequences for global capitalism. Pre-order your copy now.

Deepwater death:Scientists have found areas around the BP oil spill that are completely oxygen-depleted due to methane levels that are 100,000 times the norm – biological "dead zones".

Time in memoriam:Nicolas Hayek, the man who saved the Swiss watch industry, has died at the age of 82. Hayek introduced the plastic, kaleidoscopic 1980s must-have accessory that was the Swatch.

The question

What's going on with the Chinese yuan?

Planet Business predicts a future in which the fluctuations of the Chinese yuan on global currency markets become a hot topic at dull dinner parties. After months of loud grumbling from Washington, China abandoned its policy of keeping the yuan firmly pegged to the dollar ahead of last weekend’s G20 summit and instead embraced the era of a more “flexible” yuan. The US hopes this will mean an end to what it says is an undervaluation of the yuan versus the dollar, but Beijing has assured the Chinese population that the yuan – also known as “people’s money” – won’t strengthen so much that it cripples Chinese exporters.

China’s new policy has led to much volatility in intraday trading of the yuan. But while traders suspect the only way is up, they have also taken note of the central bank’s comments and concluded that the yuan’s ascent may be slower and more modest than the trade war hawks in the US (and other participants in the global export and import game) would like.